Post by Admin on Jun 12, 2019 18:20:38 GMT
Hours after the world's worst nuclear accident, engineer Oleksiy Breus entered the control room of the No. 4 reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine.
A member of staff at the plant from 1982, he became a witness to the immediate aftermath on the morning of 26 April 1986.
The story of the reactor's catastrophic explosion, as told in an HBO/Sky miniseries, has received the highest ever score for a TV show on the film website IMDB. Russians and Ukrainians have watched it via the internet, and it has had a favourable rating on Russian film site Kinopoisk.
Mr Breus worked with many of the individuals portrayed and has given his verdict of the series.
Warning: This story contains plot details from the miniseries.
How much was fact and fiction?
"I was surprised they even brought us there," Mr Breus says of arriving at work the morning after the explosion. "The reactor looked so damaged, it seemed there was nothing else to do there."
Some of the events he witnessed that morning were realistically depicted in the show, he says, but others he describes as fiction.
"The Chernobyl catastrophe is depicted in a very powerful way, as a global catastrophe that absorbed huge numbers of people. Also, emotions and mood at that time are shown quite precisely, both among the personnel and the authorities.
How accurate was portrayal of radiation?
Mr Breus says the series creators showed the radiation effects on the human body well.
In the hours after the explosion, he spoke to Oleksandr Akimov, the shift leader at the No. 4 reactor, and operator Leonid Toptunov, who both feature prominently in the series.
"They were not looking good, to put it mildly," he says. "It was clear they felt sick. They were very pale. Toptunov had literally turned white."
Within two weeks, both Mr Akimov and Mr Toptunov had died in a Moscow hospital of acute radiation syndrome (ARS).
"I saw other colleagues who worked that night. Their skin had a bright red colour. They later died in hospital in Moscow."
A member of staff at the plant from 1982, he became a witness to the immediate aftermath on the morning of 26 April 1986.
The story of the reactor's catastrophic explosion, as told in an HBO/Sky miniseries, has received the highest ever score for a TV show on the film website IMDB. Russians and Ukrainians have watched it via the internet, and it has had a favourable rating on Russian film site Kinopoisk.
Mr Breus worked with many of the individuals portrayed and has given his verdict of the series.
Warning: This story contains plot details from the miniseries.
How much was fact and fiction?
"I was surprised they even brought us there," Mr Breus says of arriving at work the morning after the explosion. "The reactor looked so damaged, it seemed there was nothing else to do there."
Some of the events he witnessed that morning were realistically depicted in the show, he says, but others he describes as fiction.
"The Chernobyl catastrophe is depicted in a very powerful way, as a global catastrophe that absorbed huge numbers of people. Also, emotions and mood at that time are shown quite precisely, both among the personnel and the authorities.
How accurate was portrayal of radiation?
Mr Breus says the series creators showed the radiation effects on the human body well.
In the hours after the explosion, he spoke to Oleksandr Akimov, the shift leader at the No. 4 reactor, and operator Leonid Toptunov, who both feature prominently in the series.
"They were not looking good, to put it mildly," he says. "It was clear they felt sick. They were very pale. Toptunov had literally turned white."
Within two weeks, both Mr Akimov and Mr Toptunov had died in a Moscow hospital of acute radiation syndrome (ARS).
"I saw other colleagues who worked that night. Their skin had a bright red colour. They later died in hospital in Moscow."