By Lisanne Boersma (WISE) and Jan Haverkamp (Greenpeace and WISE)
Although we know a lot of what happened during the nuclear catastrophe in Chernobyl, the HBO mini-series of the same name is extremely captivating. The series already entered the top-10 best series ever. It is #1 in the top 250 best watched series ever on [IMDB](https://www.imdb.com/chart/toptv) It is horror, crazy, grabbing attention.
The explosion of the nuclear reactor is one of the largest tragedies in history. In the first episode, you can watch the catastrophe unfolding, and how the directly involved, but also politicians could not or did not want to comprehend what really had happened and was happening. Against better judgement, they insist for hours that this only is the explosion of a cooling system. The viewer sits dumb struck, horrified and with thousands of questions.
Writer and director Craig Mazin tweeted on 8 April: “The lesson of Chernobyl isn't that modern nuclear power is dangerous. The lesson is that lying, arrogance and suppression of criticism is dangerous.” Indeed, fake-news ‘avant la lettre’ is an important theme in the series. Earlier, the 1957 nuclear catastrophe in Mayak was silenced out for decades, and the Russian nuclear giant Rosatom still does not want to admit that an accident in the same Mayak plant two years ago blew ruthenium106 all over Europe. Also in 1986, the nuclear city of Pripyat, housing most of Chernobyl’s staff, was initially hermetically sealed off to prevent information leaking out.
Facts and fiction do not only play their role in the series, but also in its reviews. A lot of disinformation is spread around it. WISE offers a few handles to approach that.
How many people died at Chernobyl?
De power of the explosion blew off the massive concrete lid of the reactor and left a gaping hole through which radioactive substances could escape for ten days. In the series, you see workers vomiting and faces turned red by radiation. Although it looks like they die on the spot, this took in reality a bit longer. According to UN [data](https://www.unscear.org/docs/publications/2008/UNSCEAR_2008_Annex-D-CORR.pdf) (UNSCEAR) 31 casualties are directly attributable to the accident. Three died on the spot and 28 people died in the following days and weeks. Most victims from direct radiation exposure are among the firefighters. The estimates of the longer lasting effects on health and the total death count of the catastrophe are varying widely.
How many people got cancer?
Although there is overwhelming evidence that every amount of radiation causes harm, there is little scientific consensus about the effects of especially lower levels of radiation. [Scientific](https://www.global2000.at/sites/global/files/GLOBAL_TORCH%202016_rz_WEB_KORR.pdf)studies produce estimates of the amount of premature deaths due to cancer caused by the Chernobyl catastrophe between 9 000 (in the most contaminated areas in the former Soviet Union) to 93 000 in all of Europe. And we are not yet talking about heart attacks, blood circulation and vascular diseases,miscarriages and birth defects, etc.
Furthermore there are the health impacts that did not lead to premature death. Already in the first 20 years, 4000 children were registered with thyroid cancer, among others because of drinking contaminated milk from cows that ate radioactive grass. Still around 5 Million people live in Belarus, Ukraine and Russia in severely contaminated areas – and some of them in places that are hardly perceived as Chernobyl impacted area, like the Bryansk region in Russia. The exclusion zone directly around Chernobyl will remain uninhabitable for decades to come.
The reason that estimates diverge so much is because there is a lot of inconsistency in the registration of potential impacts in the former Soviet Union and extrapolations on the basis of expected exposures have large margins of uncertainty. That uncertaintyresults how exposure is estimated (often on the basis of computer models), as well as from being able to recognise effects of low levels of radiation. The UN organisations that assessed the situation (UNSCEAR, IAEA, WHO) base their conclusions largely on extrapolations of external radiation doses. Many Belarusian, Russian and Ukrainian scientists point to the effects of internal radiation exposure.
Are the series factually right?
With increasing astonishment and horror you realize that what is being shown in the series, although sometimes dramatized, has all actually happened. The character of Ulana Khomyuk has been made up entirely, and the main character, professor Valery Legasov (Jared Harris) is made a bit more heroic than he actually was. In the series he is very influential concerning the measures that were taken after the catastrophe. In reality there was, of course, a large group of people that was responsible, e.g. made attempts to reduce the risks and impacts. The series discusses the scenario that the molten fuel – “you created lava” – would hit the groundwater and could result in an even largerexplosion. The chance that this could really happen and create a 4 Mton TNT explosion is not really realistic. What did worry the experts in the time was that parts of the fuel would hit groundwater and create smaller explosions hurling larger amounts of radioactive substances into the atmosphere. That this – initially a quote from one of the shocked experts – appears like a fact is too much a dramatisation. Although the series is therefore fairly truthful, the director deviates in the final episode very much from reality. Although he tweeted that he mainly wants to show the twist and lies surrounding the disaster, he completely deviates from the plot , about what Lagasof actually told during the lawsuit. This was precisely the moment to show how the facts were covered up once again, but Craig Mazin did not use this opportunity.
“Chernobyl” starts with professor Legasov recording his memories on tape. “What is the cost of lies?It's not that we'll mistake them for the truth. The real danger is that if we hear enough lies, we no longer recognize the truth at all. What can we do then? What else is left to abandon even the hope oftruth and content ourselves instead with stories? In these stories, it doesn't matter who the heroes are. All we want to know is: ‘Who is to blame?’
WISE (World Information Service on Energy) provides already over 40 years information about nuclear energy and publishes monthly the WISE/NIRS Nuclear Monitor. We need facts about nuclear power, because there are still 453 nuclear power stations operating and there is no certainty at all that a catastrophe with a similar impact can be excluded in future. And we don’t talk yet about the dangers of radioactive waste, the costs, and the small step to nuclear weapons. The lesson of“Chernobyl” is that also modern nuclear power remains being dangerous.