Hello, Dr. Zoomie – I recently streamed the HBO miniseries on Chernobyl and I’ve got to say it was a riveting show. I know there was a lot of talk about how the producers tried to make it as accurate as possible – how good a job did they do?
Well…let me put it this way: a colleague and I decided to binge-watch the 5-part miniseries and we agreed to do a shot of tequila every time there was a significant scientific or technical mistake. After the first episode we realized that there were only five bottles of tequila, which wasn’t going to be nearly enough. The historical details – clothing, for example, and interactions between people in the latter days of the Soviet Union – are said to be quite well-done. Unfortunately, the scientific and technical accuracy leaves much to be desired. Here are some of the more egregious examples.
Health effects of acute radiation exposure
Many of the workers and emergency responders were shown to be suffering from radiation burns within minutes to hours of being exposed to high levels of radiation. And it’s true that high levels of radiation can cause burns – the thing is, the burns take a number of days or even weeks to appear, not minutes. In fact, about the only radiation health effects that show up within minutes to hours are things like nausea and vomiting (which can indicate a fatal dose of radiation if they appear so quickly) or death (following a truly huge radiation dose).
It’s worth noting that Dr. Robert Gale, who treated hundreds of patients from this accident, roundly criticized this series and its portrayal of the medical effects (and medical treatment) of those exposed to high levels of radiation ((https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/06/11/top-ucla-doctor-denounces-depiction-of-radiation-in-hbos-chernobyl-as-wrong-and-dangerous/#3fde62ae1e07) , by Forbes Magazine (https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2019/06/27/how-hbo-got-it-wrong-on-chernobyl/#445b2eb79ce8), and a number of Russians and Ukrainians who were involved in the response and recovery activities (https://www.newsweek.com/blatant-lie-chernobyl-engineer-says-hbo-show-full-russian-vodka-kgb-stereotypes-1443547).
Effects of radiation on pregnancy
A major plot line followed the fate of a pregnant woman whose husband had been exposed to a high dose of radiation while responding to the accident. As the miniseries progresses she ends up losing her baby, with the doctor saying that the baby absorbed the radiation to save the life of the mother. Very noble of the baby…if this statement wasn’t completely ludicrous. How ludicrous? Let me count the ways….
- Let’s start with the fact that a fetus can’t make decisions like “Wow – let me save my mother’s life” because their brains aren’t fully formed and they’re not capable of rational thought, nor of noble gestures.
- External radiation affects the entire body and there is no known way for a part of the body or a fetus to preferentially soak up that radiation.
- Internal radioactivity might be absorbed by specific organs or tissues, but only very rarely is it able to cross the placenta to expose the fetus – and this is not under the control of the fetus either.
And at this point I start to get somewhat dejected that this premise made it into the show – it seems the science wasn’t fact-checked nearly as carefully as were the clothes.
What happens when melting fuel reaches the water table?
This was an interesting subplot – that the molten core might melt its way into the earth, reach the water table, and cause a massive explosion that would spew radioactivity into the atmosphere. When one of the characters asked how bad it could be, one of the scientists said that it would be equivalent to several megatons and would render much of Europe uninhabitable. As you might guess, there’s not a whole lot to this “analysis.”
Where a blast would originate would be the explosion of water when several tons of molten metal comes in contact with it, heating it almost instantly to boiling. When water turns to steam it increases in volume by a factor of more than 1000 and any additional heat goes into expanding that huge volume of steam further still; having this happen nearly instantaneously is what causes an explosion. Incidentally, this is what happens when gunpowder, plastic explosives, or nitroglycerin explode – a chemical reaction races through the explosive at high speeds, causing the material to turn into gas and then releasing still more heat into that gas and causing it to expand even more dramatically. The magnitude of an explosion (including a steam explosion) depends on how much energy is produced by the reaction and on how much the volume of the original explosive increases during the detonation.
The respected physicist Richard Mueller calculated that there’s not nearly enough thermal energy in the molten core to cause such a massive steam explosion, while some health physicists calculated that there wasn’t nearly enough radioactivity to render even a small chunk of Ukraine uninhabitable, let alone much of Europe. My own calculations, assuming that every bit of radioactivity present in the reactor’s core was released into the environment by such a hypothetical explosion. Even using very low levels of contamination (comparable to recommended international cleanup limits) that produce biologically unimportant exposures, the amount of land contaminated to “uninhabitable” levels would be only a fraction of the nation of Belarus, which is not a large nation. This is not an insignificant area, but it’s a far, far cry from being “most of Europe.” And, incidentally, the radiation dose rates from this level of contamination would be lower than the additional dose someone would receive by moving from, say, the Gulf Coast to the Rocky Mountains. To produce a genuinely dangerous dose the contamination would have to be concentrated in a much smaller area.
And a short word on the source material
These are three of the more egregious errors in the miniseries; there were more, and virtually all of them had the same general origin – the source material the producers chose to use. And I know that one would assume they can’t go wrong using a book written by a Nobel laureate; in this case, however, that confidence would be misplaced. Here’s the thing – the book is beautifully written by an author who’s clearly talented. The problem is that the author has come under criticism on a number of occasions for tailoring her reporting to make political points that are important to her. Among other criticisms are that she edited quotes to make them more compelling. Her own words, “Why repeat the facts – they cover up our feelings” allude to this. These, and other criticisms of Alexievich’s writing can be found in a number of articles; primarily https://newrepublic.com/article/135719/witness-tampering. You don’t reach a “deeper truth” by lying to your readers.
At the moment the world desperately needs a reliable source of baseline power that doesn’t emit carbon dioxide; nuclear power can, and should be part of the answer. The accidents at Chernobyl and Fukushima continue to resonate in the minds of the public and give pause to many who might otherwise favor it, albeit reluctantly. Unfortunately, the public debate on this subject is not meaningfully advanced by this deeply flawed series. The clothing might be spot-on, but the science is wrong, and on this subject the science is everything. But if you’re looking for a good drinking game, this is the series to watch.
Incidentally, for a genuinely good (and accurate) account of the Chernobyl accident and its aftermath you can’t do much better than Midnight at Chernobyl by journalist Adam Higginbotham. I read the book and emailed with the author afterwards – he got the science and engineering parts right, and he wrote what people actually said, not what he wished they would have said.