
The Chernobyl Story in pictures - milankragujevic
http://imgur.com/a/TwY6q
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topspin
We speak of technical debt at times here on HN and other places where workers
struggle with complex systems. The Chernobyl incident can be characterized as
a consequence of technical debt. The test that was being performed had been
deferred since prior to the start of plant operations and the operators were
attempting to complete it while under pressure from multiple sources,
including securing their own annual bonuses.

Dr. Paul Josephson covered a lot of the inside baseball surrounding Chernobyl
and other aspects of Soviet nuclear power and weaponry in his book Red Atom
(2005).

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troutwine
This is an excellent collection! Igor Kostin is mentioned in one paragraph but
I do _highly_ recommend reading his "Chernobyl: Confessions of a Reporter" if
you can get your hands on it. Confessions is an incredible bit of
photojournalism. Everyone I've ever lent the book to has been moved by the
scale of the unknowing sacrifices that were made to bring the plant under
control.

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bogomipz
I had never heard this story before about the Swedish nuclear worker who
tested positive for radiation was what led to the discovery of the incident. I
would love to know how they traced it back. This is fascinating and really
incredible that the U.S.S.R. didn't feel any responsibility to share such
information with Europe.

Amazing research and effort by the author. This is the Amazon link:

[https://www.amazon.com/Chernobyl-01-Incredible-Nuclear-
Disas...](https://www.amazon.com/Chernobyl-01-Incredible-Nuclear-
Disaster/dp/0993597505)

~~~
cocoablazing
Chernobyl occurred prior to the warming in relations that resulted from
Gorbachev's reforms, so it is understandable that the Soviets perceived a
significant threat from admitting the accident occurred. Unlike Fukushima,
Chernobyl slowly released radioactivity for days due to the fire. Initial
Soviet assessments of the accident severity were optimistic. I'm not saying
that they were right in delaying, but the fire was still burning and the
atmospheric release ongoing when they publicly revealed it.

~~~
topspin
The Soviets also covered up Kyshtym in 1957, a cover up that lasted for three
decades. Many officials in the West were complicit in that cover up, adopting
extraordinary skepticism of the available evidence to discredit those that
either knew or believed a major nuclear incident had occurred.

One of the victims of that cover up in the West was Zhores A. Medvedev. He
wrote a book (Nuclear Disaster in the Urals) in response to critics of his
claims of a major nuclear disaster. The book is a truly fascinating survey of
open sources of academic work published by Soviet researchers that reveals the
incident indirectly; the papers (typically studies of the effect of
contamination of various organisms; fish, plants, worms, deer, etc.) could
only have been written if a large area of land had been heavily contaminated,
and this subtlety was lost on the state censors, who were themselves not aware
that Kyshtym had happened.

Medvedev was eventually vindicated when the Soviets fessed up in the late
'80s.

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guscost
Amazing photos, but please see my other comment about this caption:

> It... was considered to be the best and most reliable of the Soviet Union’s
> nuclear facilities

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13349940](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13349940)

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tehabe
I still remember this. When it happened I was 7 years old and I was living in
Germany. The town were I was living in blocked all playgrounds for weeks. And
my parents warned me more about picking stuff up from the ground.

I actually never knew if this made a difference.

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xal
Exactly the same experience for me. I remember we stayed inside for weeks.

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coldcode
About as haunting a set of photos as you can have. Imagine going from a
carefree existence as a child and in two days being evacuated with nothing,
and not idea if you are going to die soon or not.

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codecamper
I had no idea that there could have been a second explosion. However, I didn't
really get from this article why that is no longer a possibility.

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gtfierro
My understanding was that until the "elephant's foot" and other radioactive
lava flows were found, everyone was under the impression that there was still
fuel in the reactor, which carried the possibility of a second explosion. The
existence of the lava flows instead indicated that everything had melted
together and spread throughout the lower parts of the building: radioactive,
but no longer prone to an explosion.

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pastullo
Amazing collection! Really expanded on a few less-known aspects of the
disaster

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ldmosquera
BRILLIANT.

