HBO, known for outstanding drama, will begin a five-part miniseries called Chernobyl on May 6, based on the 1986 nuclear accident in the Soviet Union. Viewers might see the Hollywood treatment and wonder what the relevance is outside the USSR.
The short answer is: not much.
In the spring of 1986, a steam explosion in a Soviet reactor, followed by an intense fire, released a plume of radioactive particles. Moscow denied everything and denounced the reports of high radiation readings as part of “a poisoned cloud of anti-Sovietism.” The explosion and fire, the heroic efforts to limit the damage, the inept government response, and anything with “nuclear” in the title all make for good television.
We can learn something from the event, one of the biggest industrial tragedies of the 1980s. However, much of the underlying circumstances were particular to the Chernobyl reactor and the Soviet government’s response.
What Led to the Accident at Chernobyl?
The reactor was designed in classic Soviet fashion: gigantic, cheap and unsophisticated. The emphasis was on production, not safety. It lacked a key safety feature of western reactors: a containment vessel, an airtight building made of concrete and steel that prevents anything from escaping the reactor. Chernobyl also lacked other safety mechanisms that are considered standard design in the rest of the world.
The reactor at Chernobyl was packed with graphite. Graphite can be a very useful material in a safe reactor design. But in an unstable design like the reactor at Chernobyl, it was fuel for the fire that resulted from the explosion.
The operators had the same attitude as the builders. Managers ignored safety rules laid down by engineers so production quotas could be met. Workers and lower-level managers were afraid to raise objections when they saw something wrong. And, the accident occurred when an electrical engineer was running an unauthorized, unanalyzed and unsupervised experiment on the reactor.
The accident response followed the same pattern as the operations. Managers lied to higher-ups to exonerate themselves. Communist Party bosses, having suppressed word of previous accidents, did not want to hear about another one.
Craig Mazin, the writer and producer of the HBO miniseries, made the point in a recent tweet:
How Much of the Series Chernobyl is Real?
REAL LIFE:
There was an unprecedented steam explosion that completely wrecked a reactor. Firefighters and plant workers—sometimes through ignorance and sometimes because of altruistic self-sacrifice—exposed themselves to huge doses of radiation to try to limit the damage.
As for the miniseries, HBO calls it a “dramatization.” It’s a good description. The steam explosion was in fact dramatic: powerful enough to lift the 1,000-metric-ton lid off the reactor. It also was tragic. Thirty-one plant personnel, firefighters and other emergency responders died within three months from the explosion, radiation poisoning and other causes. Among the millions of people in the region, there may well be additional cases of cancer, although the number will be hard to pin down.
DRAMA:
But other parts clearly are dramatized. For example, one of the characters in the miniseries is there to unravel the mystery of what happened. But that had to be dramatized, because in the real event there wasn’t much mystery. The investigators knew the basic, unstable nature of the RBMK reactor, which had been the subject of internal debate in the Soviet government. No electric company outside the communist bloc ever built anything like it.
Could the Accident at Chernobyl Happen in the U.S.?
In a word, no. The accident was caused in large part by two problems: the type of reactor and the culture of secrecy.
The reactor built at Chernobyl is a RBMK reactor, which was never built by any country outside the USSR because it’s a bad design. The RBMK had characteristics that were rejected everywhere outside the Soviet Union. Chief among these was its inherent instability, especially on startup and shutdown. When Soviet operators tried to reduce power, the RBMK had a tendency to sharply increase power production instead. It became like a boulder rolling down hill; as overheating became more severe, power increased even more.
In contrast, most reactors in the West, and all of the commercial power plants operating in the United States, are based on a design that relies on water to keep the nuclear reaction going. If the water heats up, the power drops. If a substantial amount of water boils or leaks way, the reactor shuts down. It cannot keep running.
How Did the Soviets Let This Happen?
The USSR had a lot of smart engineers. They’d beaten the United States into space and swiftly electrified and industrialized a vast country. But as the HBO series points out, the country suffered from extreme management problems and a pattern of secrecy that wasn’t compatible with industrial safety.
The KGB—the USSR’s secret police and intelligence agency—routinely suppressed news of nuclear accidents, keeping them secret even from reactor operators who could have learned lessons from those events. Another RBMK reactor had suffered a mishap that should have been a warning for the Chernobyl operators, but this was kept from them. Adam Higginbotham recently took a thorough look at the pattern of self-deception and cutting corners in his latest book, Midnight in Chernobyl.
The U.S. doesn’t work that way.
Lack of openness and a poor industrial safety record isn’t limited to the Soviets, or their successors the Russians. It’s also shared by the other nominally communist player in international nuclear markets, China. It’s another reason that the United States should maintain global leadership in nuclear technology exports.
Why Was the Accident Response So Ineffective?
For days, government officials and Communist Party leaders simply denied that an accident had occurred. People in the area absorbed radiation because they blissfully went about their daily business. Simply telling them to stay indoors would have been an easy precaution to protect public health.
The accident did not cause acute radiation sickness beyond a radius of a few kilometers. But it did cause more long-term damage than it should have.
What Can We Learn From the Chernobyl Accident?
A lot of progress in industrial society comes from recognizing previous failures and using them to move forward. But the Soviets made recognizing failure akin to treason. In a communist society, there were no disasters. A perfect ideology provided prosperity and security for its citizens. Accidents were simply a byproduct of capitalism.
Chernobyl demonstrated the shortcomings of that approach and even contributed to the downfall of the Soviet Union.
Our approach to the accident at Chernobyl should not be self-congratulatory. We analyze plane crashes, fires, explosions and other accidents for insight. We should do the same with Chernobyl. No, it can’t happen here. But safety means continued vigilance.
That said, this is probably going to be a pretty good show, especially since it boasts a star-studded cast including Jared Harris, Stellan Skarsgard and Emily Watson. We’re looking forward to sitting down and watching it, albeit with a critical eye.
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