The Big Problem With the HBO Chernobyl Miniseries: Vichnaya Pamyat - Part One

the HBO miniseries on Chernobyl stands out as one of the biggest successes in recent TV show Making surely that cannot

possibly have anything to do with Soviet propaganda crafted by the people the show's Creator Craig masing refers to as

masters of weaponized narration this man probably very few of you recognized if anyone his name is

gregori Medvedev the author of Chernobyl notebook or alternatively the truth about Chernobyl according to W cover the

work is described as an exciting minute by minute account by a leading Soviet nuclear physicist on the world's largest

nuclear disaster and coverup alternatively meddev is described as a nuclear power specialist

who worked for a time at the Chernobyl AES and knows it well just as he is personally acquainted with all the

principal participants in the events how well did this former worker actually know the Chernobyl nuclear power plant behold this

paragraph despite meddev evidently being aware that the control rods were comprised of two sections neutral on absorbing Boron and water displacing

graphite Each of which was in the ballpark of 5 m long our aidite auor claims that 5 m worth of graphite in

addition to 1 M worth of empty space are the first to enter the core from above when control rods are fully extracted these are the fictional graphite tips

that make no sense whatsoever because they literally make no sense whatsoever the graphite displacers were located symmetrically in the center of the core

when control rods were maximally extracted so as to displace Neutron absorbing water columns and increase the reactivity worth of control rods rather

than having the neutron-absorbing Boron sections move into neutron-absorbing water areas graphite displacers absorbing less neutrons than water

provided a greater differential making control rod movement more effective in either direction also if the graphite sections

followed by the Boron sections entered the core from above the control rods would have stuck out into the reactor Hall a ludicrous mistake like this on a

fundamental aspect of the disaster by someone touted as being a nuclear specialist of particular familiarity with Chernobyl and its circumstances is

a big red flag possibly with a hammer and sickle on it gregori meddev and his book are clearly one of the principal sources the HBO

miniseries relied on Alexander CNE a choby liquidator employed by the nuclear power plant for 21 years between 1988

and 2009 with his own YouTube channel in Russian reacted to the miniseries in one video copney singles out a few of the dubious sources in the Min series relied

on the comments about medvedev's book are as follows almost the same I can say about Chernobyl notebook by medv according to True Chernobyl nuclear

power plant workers including senior reactor operators unit control room workers they say that this book is written by order that is probably some

party members were behind this novel that is again called documentary they needed it to be published they needed to spread among the masses the information that the main

perpetrator of the Chernobyl accident is Personnel the video then cuts to a statement by Alexi fatov a former Chernobyl senior reactor control engineer and

instructor who says the following when I started to watch I couldn't understand from the beginning what this reminds me of then I realized it is 80% the book of

gregori meddev Chernobyl notebook of 1989 all the names sequences everything filmed in this series fit the book the

film is related to the reality equally like the book is all the bloopers and intentional lies written by medev in the book on the request to tarnish diatlov

Chernobyl nuclear power plant Personnel episode five of the miniseries is its gripping and chilling climax its title is Eternal

memory memory is a funny thing particularly when it is eternal in the coming videos we will explore some of the key Things episode 5 Mis remembers

twisting the memory of chinoy and of the people involved We Begin where the script begins with the motivation of chinoy management to force through the

performance of the turbine rundown safety test according to the script on the 20 of April 1986 chief engineer Nikolai fine is

sitting with deputy chief engineer Anatoli diov implant director Victor bov's office these are the three stoes at the

top of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant hierarchy we later see in the courtroom being duly prosecuted fine says brov's promotion beyond the nuclear power plant

is dependent on the completion of the safety test forine himself self will Elevate to plant director with diatlov potentially elevating to the chief

engineer of the plant banov enters in a foul mood informing his Management Associates that they will have to wait

in reality banov was a soft Spoken Man but in the script he cuts off fine two words into a question with you're going to ask me if there's a problem Nikolai

you can't read a [ __ ] face his odiously entertaining character stays consistent from here banov goes on to say that he has been rating for three

years to complete this test now with the association of attaining his promotion it'll become even easier to read in between lines that these three men

didn't care much about the safety test itself what they proceed to discuss is the key of delay a Lynch pin in the episode's narrative banov asks the outlo

if this delay will cause instability issues diatlov says it won't and that he'll personally be there for the test banov likes dv's assurance that the test

will be completed and forine has a private moment running his fingers covetously along the edge of brov's desk according to Adam Higgin Bam's midnight

in Chernobyl the untold story of the world's greatest nuclear disaster the story was different by the spring of 1986 chob was officially one of the best

performing nuclear stations in the Soviet Union and the Word was that brov's loyalty to the party would soon be rewarded according to the results of the

latest 5-year plan the plant was due to receive the state's highest honor the order of Lenin the staff would win a financial bonus and banov would be awarded the

star of the hero of socialist labor at the minister of energy the decision had already been taken to promote banov to Moscow and fim would take his place as

plant director the news would be announced on the May 1st holiday with a decree of the presidium of the Supreme Soviet in a poit bureau meeting after

the disaster the deputy minister of the ministry of energy gnedy shash Sharin stated that in the ministry chobble was considered

exemplary appointed the best director the international in Sag one report noted that Chernobyl unit 4 was in fact

the most successful rbmk unit so ranov was the best director of the plant with the best rbmk unit that

on the whole was considered exemplary the results of the latest 5-year plan warranted that the state's highest honor win a bonus for the staff and an award

for banov these sound like adequate grounds for promotion but what about the test itself while it is true that the rundown test was included in the design of rbmk

plants it was never actually completed anywhere and apparently was only attempted at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant according to a participant in the

disaster investigation other plants wrote the test out of their regulations the test was apparently redundant and unclear it was the

flagship Chernobyl rbmk power plant that burdened itself with seeing the test through a 2021 newspaper article claims

that the Leningrad nuclear power plant refused the test shortly before that tragedy director anat pavlovich epin refused to conduct the kind of

experiment that was carried out in Chernobyl and no one could force him we suspect that the safety concern the article brings up over what was supposed to be a safety test is colored strongly

in blur hindsight the most startling judgment we have of the test comes from a July 3rd 1986 poit Bureau meeting through two

different sets of notes the speaker is epim slavski the Minister of the extremely powerful Ministry of media machine building that was the ultimate

Authority on all things nuclear a man-made explosion was created why did they need this idiotic experiment firef

Fighters died because of the incompetence the reactor is good durable but what have they done a regional engineer who had no right to do it

attempted the experiment alternatively shash sharim was singing here like a bolshoy theater performer but he did not say what a completely senseless experiment was conducted at

the MPS who needed that the idea for the so-called experiment came from the chief design engineer of rbmk reactors niket a

major Institute that fell under the umbrella of the ministry of media machine building we will get to the role of the regional engineer a probable reference to Anatoli diatlov later

suffice it to say that it was the Stellar performance of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and the major economic benefit it provided over the course of years rather than the

performance of a single peculiar test on which a chain of promotions for the plant management rested the promotions were a forone conclusion

director banov was apparently unaware that this test was even taking place the promotion motive for what happened that night appears to be an invention of the

HBO miniseries as we can't even find it in gregori medvedev's book how it ended up in the script is a question for Creator Craig masin

toan next we come to the scene of Valeri legasov having a uncomfortable conversation with the head of the KGB inside a black limo as you might already

be guessing this is fiction too but what episode 5 seeks to convey is an imagined reality of the Soviet state oppressing Soviet scientist without even looking at the

driil of the script let's get straight into what actual sources indicate according to insa 7 on page 60 merely days after the disaster VP volov

apparently the main safety and reliability figure at The katov Institute of atomic energy provided AP alexandrov the director of The katov

Institute and subsequently the leaders of the Soviet Union with an explanation of the disaster which attributed it not to the

actions of the operating Personnel but to the design of the reacor and a lack of proper understanding of the neutron physics processes going on in it

this version suggested that the accident was caused by a positive reactivity Excursion following the insertion of the reactor control and protection system rods as a result of their defective

design and the large positive void coefficient of reactivity on page 146 of her book producing power the pre- choby history

of the Soviet nuclear industry researcher Sonia dmid goes further after the Chernobyl accident volov sent the report he had written to

alexandrov back in the 1970s to the prosecutor's office almost instantaneously by the 1st of May

1986 he was banned from entering his workplace The Institute of atomic energy volov promptly wrote letters to Mikel Gorbachev to the chairman of the Council

of ministers Nikolai riskof and to the attorney general a runov in the letters he argued the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant was caused not by

the actions of the operating Personnel but by the construction of the active Zone and the lack of understanding of the processes taking place in it a loss of coolant in the active Zone led to an

increase of reactivity which led to the destruction of the reactor then in an end note on page 289

Schmid points out that she was not able to personal view volkov's report but that apparently volov even listed the names of those he considered culpable for the choby

catastrophe guilty for what has happened are the scientific director I AE or the cachat of Institute of atomic energy the

chief designer niket and also minero the ministry of energy operating rbmk reactors this Nexus of guilty parties

reminds us of the following quote in polit Bureau session notes did you know before that the reactor was

unreliable yes but you will not find it in the papers there was great resistance alexandrov was opposed the Academy of Sciences was also the

ministry of medium machine building demanded that we increase production of energy at nuclear power stations by the year 2000 so the main safety and reliability

person at the katov Institute of atomic energy referred his top boss director of the kach of Institute of atomic energy and president of the Soviet Academy of

Sciences Anatoli alexandrov to the prosecutor's office volov ran to the state rather than run from it volov was adamant that the Chernobyl

disaster was not due to the actions of The Operators his name appears once more in Sag 7 this is an apparent direct

citation from one of his reports the first quoted paragraph identifies multiple factors the second paragraph points a finger the scale of

the Chernobyl accident was therefore not determined by Personnel actions but by a lack of understanding primarily on the

part of the scientific managers of the effect of steam quality on the re activity of the rbmk core this led to an incorrect analysis

of the operational safety to a disregard of repeated manifestations of the large void reactivity effect during operation to a false confidence in the

effectiveness of the reactor control and protection system which in fact failed to cope with both the Chernobyl accident and many others in particular with

design basis accidents and naturally to the formulation of incorrect operating procedures volov argues that the Chernobyl disaster was due to Scientific

ignorance and mismanagement at the highest levels he even points out that the operating instructions themselves were incorrect as a consequence of this

lack of understanding which is a topic we cover in serious detail in the Masters of weaponized narration series it was not the operators who

flouted the operating instruction it was the scientists who failed to write them correctly and after the disaster lied about them to avoid

responsibility by scapegoating The Operators volov continues this inadequate level of scientific management is explained Above

All by the following the extremely low number of studies of the neutron physics processes taking place in the rbmk core

a disregard for the discrepancies in the results obtained using different methods the lack of experimental studies under conditions close to the Natural ones the

lack of analysis of specialized Publications and in the long run the transmission to the chief design engineer of incorrect techniques for

calculating the neutron physics processes used to analyze the processes taking place in the core and the safety of plants with rbmk

reactors it is also an important point that for a long time the USSR Ministry of power had been operating plants with rbmk reactors with Neutron physics

instabilities in the core but did not take sufficient notice of the repeated unusual signals of the emergency power protection system and of the emergency

power increase rate protection system following triggering of the eps and did not demand thorough investigations of emergency

situations we are bound to conclude that an accident such as that at Chernobyl was inevitable to volov Chernobyl was

basically a scientific failure inside the polit bureau the scientific failure to understand the rbmk was mentioned openly this reactor has its own

strengths the rbmk is an industrial reactor but it is less studied is that right comrade legasov yes that's

right why were theoretical studies of this reactor halted and not financed comrade alexandrov told me about it he is sad about what

happened so they moved the reactor to industrial production but further theoretical research had not been done and yet why wasn't theoretical research

continued doesn't it look like volunt terrorism by some individuals is dragging the country into adventurism it is true that monopolism

is at quite a high level eventually Soviet leader Gorbachev let loose we have been hearing from you

scientists Specialists ministers that everything is under control here and you expect us to look up to you as if you were

Gods this is where it all started because the Ministries and all the scientific centers got out of control and it all ended in failure and even now

I do not see that you are contemplating any conclusions you are all just stating facts or even trying to smooth over some

of them this is where the Monopoly in science and in Industry leads the problem of energy production in every aspect scientific experimental turned

out to be out of control reads the expert opinion the reactor was unreliable and

you did not do anything about it it did not raise your concern why weren't theoretical studies funded Where Have

You Been academician alexandrov himself said that but he also missed something today he is agonizing over it although

he Bears great blame it wasn't only katov Institute director anat alexandrov Who Bore brain at the moment we won't delve into the reasons

why everyone in the poit bureau was comfortable throwing the operators under the bus most of all but we do find a curious quote at the end of one set of

notes legasov Valeri alexandrovich of course it is our fault that we did not monitor this reactor I am personally to blame for

this as well the miniseries chooses to make legasov its hero and he is the central protagonist of the Eternal memory episode 5 let's refresh our own

Eternal memory with some of the leg glov tidbits we've encountered in some previous videos Valeri legasov was the first deputy director of The katov

Institute of atomic energy a favored associate of director Anatoli alexandrov recall the anecdote katov Institute computer specialist Alexander

en ranv shares in the second pre- choby history video in a 1984 meeting at The katov Institute alexandrov and legasov

sat in the front row of the conference Hall as they were being warned that the Computing base of the Institute does not enable adequate research to be done and

that the newest rbmk reactor units with all the improvements implemented Ed in them are most susceptible to a severe incident the risk of Unfinished reactor

designs was explicitly emphasized ranv writes that legasov reacted violently to what he heard turning to personal insults against the

speaker alexandrov sat quietly but proceeded to abolish a Computing department and changed the plans for the construction of an expansion of the institute's Computing base

after the Chernobyl disaster ranv reports that the tapes of this meeting disappeared from the archives and that while legasov promised to include him on

the team analyzing the causes of the disaster ranv later learned that legasov actually instructed for ranv to be

excluded legasov willingly portrays himself on his tapes recorded after the disaster as an ignoramus at one point hilariously stating but traditional

reactor engineering somehow did not interest me much and it was not aign to me and it seemed rather boring legasov claims on his tapes in

contrast to inside the poit bureau that practically speaking he knew nothing about the rbmk reactors and had no responsibility for them yet ranv writes

the following EP kunan who served as Deputy scientific director of the rbmk project passed away in

1983 AP alexandrov became the president of the USSR Academy of Sciences the actual management of the reactor areas was transferred to the

deputy director of The Institute VA legasov a talented chemist this comment was not lost on one of our viewers who claims to have worked

under legasov thanks for the video I wasn't aware about bureaucracy aspects of USSR energy production I didn't know V legasov became highly

responsible person for entire reactor business of the iae from 1981 year maybe off he used to have time to learn reactors surprise for

me but this was not all the gas of was potentially hiding recall another anecdote this time from Chernobyl task

force notetaker Georgie kopchinski at the end of the second masters of weap weaponized narration video kopinsky confronted legasov about

the falsity of his initial reports conclusion that the actions of The Operators were responsible for the disaster legasov heard but did not

respond and neither did alexandrov who was also present legasov reportedly looked in the direction of his political Ally Soviet prime minister Nikolai ROV

and went away on his tapes legasov did not come clean he simply reaffirmed that the actions of The Operators were monstrous and their punishment

deserved and so we come back to the black limo where the head of the KGB is bullying legasov who is played by an actor who seemingly got his lunch money

stolen every other day when he was in school let's highlight a couple of misunder understandings that the script writers suffered from the KGB boss celebrates the positive impression

legasov left at the international Vienna conference a few months after the disaster legasov is morose and guilty well according to Adam Higgin Boven

midnight in Chernobyl real life legasov was basically the KB person sitting on the comfortable side of the limo pressed by reporters on the

disadvantages in the reactor design he had mentioned legasov replied the defect of the system was that the designers did not foresee the awkward and silly

actions by The Operators impressed by such apparently unprecedented candle from Soviet scientists and reassured by the idea

that the disaster was an extraordinary event that had little relevance for nuclear safety outside the USSR and that its health and environmental

consequences fell within acceptable limits the delegates left the hall confident in the future of Soviet atomic energy and of their industry around the

world by the time they departed from Vienna at the end of the week the mood was cheerful almost jubilant for the Soviet Union and for Valeri legasov

personally the conference was a prominent British physicist remarked in the bulletin of atomic scientists a public relations Triumph on his return

to Moscow legasov went directly to the katov Institute and ran up the steps to the third floor Victory he shouted to a friend maybe that was just the

adrenaline rush next we see the epitome of episode 5's misconception and miscasting of

Heroes good boy legasov implies that the only reason he has been lying is because the big bad Soviet government and the scary KGB wouldn't let The Virtuous

scientist fix the rbmk reactors of wise well according to inag 7 in the adult reality we actually live in one of the indications that the Soviet scientists

were lying is how quickly they got around to fixing the rbmk reactors predating the Vienna meeting the commission considers that

the negative properties of this type of reactor are likely to predetermine the inevitability of emergency situations and that they certainly do not

demonstrate that such situations are likely to be extremely rare and would occur only in the event of an extremely improbable combination of reactor

operating procedures and conditions adopted by the unit Personnel thus it seems that the reactor designers were well aware of the possible dangerous consequences of the

reactor characteristics and understood how the safety of the rbmk 1000 reactor could be improved this is confirmed by the fact that the main technical measures to

enhance the safety of the RBM k1000 reactor were announced less than a month and a half after the accident you can read what these measures

included these measures obviously do not tally with the official version which blame the accident entirely on Personnel

errors according to the script the KGB man representative of the state wants to reward the Gasol flying with an award he

did not receive and with a promotion to the director of The kacharov Institute the actual director alexandrov intended for him but that did not happen

either allow us to digress with our Theory as to why these positive outcomes for legasov did not occur one apparently yanked by Soviet

leader Gorbachev and the latter precluded by a vote against legasov at The katov Institute of atomic energy

as usual our take is ironic much of what you may read about legasov is positive it is not only the miniseries that mistakenly casts him as our hero our

approach to Chernobyl has been different starting from the bottom up and branching out our observations of the concrete lies and political statements

legasov had made renderers extremely skeptical of the man we see him not as a man of positive stories but as someone who was consistently on the wrong side

of History before and after the disaster he lied about the safety of Soviet reactors before Chernobyl and he lied about Chernobyl after Chernobyl he was

also wrong about the safety fears he voices on his tapes and he never set the record straight on the lies he told Against The

Operators as we have examined the extent and purpose of the lies he successfully told hold against The Operators and as we have come across various statements

about his role very much including his own our strong inclination is that Valeri legasov was a fairly Sinister figure we believe that the following

sums up why things started to go downhill for the gas of after his initial success at the Vienna meeting lying his butt off one senior scientific

colleague from The katov Institute wrote not anonymously that legasov was a clear representative of that scientific Mafia whose political leanings instead of

scientific leadership led to the Chernobyl accident we first encountered this remarkable quote on Wikipedia and confirmed it inside the proper Source

this is a 1994 book from the center for strategic and international studies in Washington DC at the time we were able to view page

34 in full but by using the word Mafia in the search you can still pull up a partial quote amusingly the author dismisses this not Anonymous claim from

a senior katov Institute scientist as nothing more than professional jealousy however some American writing from Washington DC was not aware of many

things a senior scientist at The katov Institute would be aware of we suspect that as time passed and the reality of what actually happened at ch Noble and

how it was covered up crystallized to an exclusive group of people at least Valar legasov was

repudiated what guilt he actually suffered from he took to his grave