Posted by osm3000 11/20/2025
No indications the real-life event was an _act of god_ or _natural disaster_. The HBO series is a dramatization of human error, and stands or falls on the merits of fiction.
In other words—Sorry you didn’t like this dramatization of the disaster. As other said, it’s not a documentary.
Biopics/dramatizations of events often bring multiple minor characters together into a single person.
I would be more bothered by the change of small details irrelevant to the narrative than I am by larger character changes. I would prefer that the mainline details stay the same - chain of events, impact to the town, aftermath - but I am not watching the series in order to write a paper. I appreciate the articles which document the fiction vs. reality of historical dramas, but I do not share in any anger. Then again, I'm not related to anyone whose character was represented in the series.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yY0r1Ln6tkM
For the life of me I couldn't figure out what truth he is talking about (other than that Chernobyl happened, and some characters existed)
Deeply ironic for a show with the tagline "What is the cost of lies?"
To me, there are more substantive issues, e.g.
* Claiming that nobody survived watching from the Bridge of Death, when it hasn't even been confirmed there was a gathering of people on the bridge, let alone any of that group dying from it. But Voices of Chernobyl contained accounts from survivors who claim they were there and happened, and it makes excellent drama, so into the show it goes.
* Raising the idea that Vasily Ignatenko was giving off dangerous radiation to his wife, but her baby "absorbed" it, killing it and protecting her. This is a complete myth, and it comes directly from Lyudmilla Ignatenko herself. It's gripping testimony, but it's simply not true, and one doctor who was there, reflected on how the myth of people being "contaminated" led to a lot of evacuated children not being accepted by families in Moscow because of this fear. (https://www.vanityfair.com/video/watch/radiation-expert-revi...)
But overall, I agree with your point, the irony is not lost. This series was utterly compelling to me, and had such amazing drama. It's almost certainly not the case that Valery Legasov gave an eloquent speech berating his own government in the middle of the Chernobyl trial, but it felt so good when he did that in the TV show. It's a lie that comforts the viewer, telling them that there is a just world, and the liars and self-serving bureaucrats and dysfunctional governments of this world will be held to account, by good people, truthtellers.
There was no mass funeral with victims buried in concrete. But the spectacle of the TV show moved me to tears. Again, dramatic license. There were victims buried in lead coffins, in regular graves: wouldn't that imagery have been enough? No, because once the show has brought you to your knees with a row of lead coffins and mourning families, the cement mixer arriving over the hill then pushes you right over the edge. The concrete flowing around the coffins is such a visually powerful scene. Even though it's false, I wouldn't ever take it out of the show.
The bouncing caps stuck with me as I've seen many reviews online mentioning how fascinating they found the scene. In my opinion it's only fascinating if it has some grounding in the actual truth. After all, the show wouldn't be as popular if it was about a made up disaster and made up energy technology.
I agree the show is compelling, but once I noticed the inaccuracies, it became difficult to immerse myself. Perhaps I would've enjoyed it more if the show runner didn't claim high accuracy.
The Catholic Church don't like it, not because it ties some fictional conspiracy to them in the context of the plot, but because that first page claims the conspiracy is real. There is a real Opus Dei organisation, but that organisation does not employ albino assassins with peanut allergies, and it's not at war with Pierre Plantard's completely made up organisation.
And this is the lie. Before they pressed the AZ-5 button: (quote from INSAG-7 report) "the parameters of the unit were controlled, remained within the limits expected for the operating conditions concerned, and did not require any intervention on the part of the personnel."
There was no drama in the control room, everything was mostly calm and "business as usual".
The Soviets invented the story "these youkels at Chernobyl did unauthorized experiment, disabled all safety mechanisms, broke all the rules and blew up our big beautiful reactor." This story was presented at the IAEA meeting in Vienna in 1986 by Legasov himself and published as the INSAG-1 report. The miniseries repeats this story but shifts all the blame to evil Dyatlov.
After the Soviet Union fell, the updated report INSAG-7 was published in 1992, which I quoted above.
The image presented in the TV show is not that Dyatlov is evil, but that he is dismissive of his staff's concerns, he bullies them into submission, and he has a callous indifference to safety. This is all true. He's also the main author of the test procedure! Dyatlov had been at Chernobyl since planning began in 1973, and by comparison Toptunov was 25 years old and had only been in his post for 3 months. If anyone is to blame, it's going to be Dyatlov, and chief engineer Fomin who permitted Dyatlov to run the test. But as the TV show makes clear, this pales into insignificance when compared with a regime that intentionally buries secrets, like them already knowing the unsafe design of the RBMK control rods.
The only way I'd say the TV show did him a disservice is in showing him in complete denial there was a problem, and demanding water be pumped into the (nonexistant) core. In reality, he realised it was futile, but after reporting to Fomin and Bryukhanov and collapsing from radiation sickness, it was Fomin who took his place, did not understand the situation, and ordered the futile water pumping.
From INSAG-7:
> When the reactor power could not be restored to the intended level of 700 MW(th), the operating staff did not stop and think, but on the spot they modified the test conditions to match their view at that moment of the prevailing conditions.
> operating rules were violated, and control and safety rods were placed in a configuration that would have compromised the emergency protection of the reactor even had the rod design not been faulty on the ground of the positive scram effect mentioned earlier. Most reprehensibly, unapproved changes in the test procedure were deliberately made on the spot, although the plant was known to be in a condition very different from that intended for the test
> INSAG, with the present report, does not retract INSAG-1, nor does it alter the conclusions of that report except as clearly indicated here. While the balance of INSAG's judgement of the factors contributing to the accident has shifted, the many other conclusions of INSAG-1 are unaffected.
If it's "business as usual" for the operators to invent changes to nuclear safety tests as they carry them out... I don't know what to say to you!
I suspect that you are sourcing "Midnight in Chernobyl", which is based on Medvedev's book, which is full of inventions.
> a regime that intentionally buries secrets, like them already knowing the unsafe design of the RBMK control rods.
This is an invention in the miniseries. See section 4.1 in the INSAG-7 about the Ignalina phenomenon.
> When the reactor power could not be restored to the intended level of 700 MW(th), the operating staff did not stop and think, but on the spot they modified the test conditions to match their view at that moment of the prevailing conditions.
This is a weak spot in the INSAG-7. The 700 MW was the upper limit, not the lower and this number was put in the test conditions by Dyatlov, who designed the test.
> operating rules were violated, and control and safety rods were placed in a configuration
The only operational rule violated was the ORM margin but there was no indication about this metric in the control room and the operators weren't aware of this violation. They were still prosecuted for this. Criminal investigation against Akimov and Toptunov was closed only in November 1986, six months after their deaths.
> INSAG, with the present report, does not retract INSAG-1, nor does it alter the conclusions of that report except as clearly indicated here.
I love this. "No, no, it wasn't bullshit that Legasov gave us in 1986."
> the operators to invent changes to nuclear safety tests
It is not that kind of nuclear safety test that was sent to them from above. The organization that designed the reactor proposed a new mode of operation but didn't bother to design anything. The changes to the design and testing were prepared locally at Chernobyl NPP, so it was Dyatlov who prepared the test program. Fomin authorized the test. The INSAG-7 report says that regulations NSR-04-74 and GSP-82, which were in force at the time of the accident, did not require the plant managers to obtain approval from someone else. In 1987, Fomin was sentenced to 10 years in a penal colony anyway.
https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2013-02-07-source-shakespeares-ina...
https://www.neimagazine.com/analysis/why-insag-has-still-got...
I only recently watched this series and found it very entertaining. But I never expected it to be very accurate. It's definitely been dramatized for TV. I definitely didn't get an anti-nuclear sentiment from the show, I mostly think they were trying to portray a negative view of Soviet Bureaucracy.
I honestly don't see a problem with dramatization (not my taste, but people are different I guess).
My issue is with Craig Mazin (the creator of the series) insistence that he stuck to the details and the truth in the series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yY0r1Ln6tkM
One thing not mentioned in TFA, though, is how those suffering from radiation sickness (first responders like the firefighter Ignatenko, etc.) are portrayed almost as if they are contagious, and so should not be touched. The Chernobyl series is not the only one to do this, either, and it can lead to viewers thinking radiation sickness is something you can "catch" from someone else.
I don't know why they never make it clear that it's for the sake of the sickened themselves that contact should be minimized (assuming all contaminated clothing etc. has already been discarded), since their immune and other internal systems are totally compromised by radiation poisoning.