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Chernobyl survivors confirm the accuracy of the TV series, about nuclear radiation

Chernobyl survivors assess fact and fiction in TV series, By Viacheslav Shramovych and Hanna Chornous, BBC Ukrainian  12 June 19,  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.

What about the main characters?

The roles of three key personalities lie at the heart of the story: Plant director Viktor) Bryukhanov, chief engineer Nikolai Fomin and deputy chief engineer Anatoly Dyatlov. And Oleksiy Breus sees their portrayal as “not a fiction, but a blatant lie”.

“Their characters are distorted and misrepresented, as if they were villains. They were nothing like that.”

“Possibly, Anatoly Dyatlov became the main anti-hero in the show because that was how he was perceived by the power plant’s workers, his subordinates and top-management, in the beginning. Later this perception changed.”

All three men were sentenced to 10 years in a labour camp for their role in the disaster and series creator Craig Mazin maintains that Dyatlov in particular was a “real bully”, who later made statements that were not credible.

“The operators were afraid of him,” Mr Breus agrees. “When he was present at the block, it created tension for everyone. But no matter how strict he was, he was still a high-level professional.”

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.”

“Radiation exposure, red skin, radiation burns and steam burns were what many people talked about but it was never shown like this. When I finished my shift, my skin was brown, as if I had a proper suntan all over my body. My body parts not covered by clothes – such as hands, face and neck – were red”.

In the weeks immediately after the explosion, 29 power plant workers and firefighters died from ARS, caused by exposure to high doses of ionising radiation, according to Soviet officials.

Two more workers died because of injuries. The body of one of them, Valery Khodemchuk, was never recovered from the reactor debris………https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-48580177

July 1, 2019 Posted by | media, Ukraine | Leave a comment

A film that reminded the world of the nuclear danger

The China Syndrome (1979) ORIGINAL TRAILER [HD 1080p]


How THE CHINA SYNDROME Brought Down The Nuclear Power Industry, The film that predicted Three Mile Island and affected the response to Chernobyl. Birth, Movies, Death. By ANDREW TODD Jun. 28, 2019  When we think about nuclear power, we tend to think about disasters. Real life has given us plenty of reason to do so: between Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima, three major global powers have each seen their nuclear industries fall subject to catastrophe. People died; economies crashed; whole sections of Earth were rendered uninhabitable. Hell, Chernobyl arguably ended the entire Soviet Union.

Entertainment, too, has played a significant role in creating this image of nuclear power. Dozens of movies, TV miniseries, and documentaries over the years have played off and magnified real-life fears, often drawing a direct connection between the “peaceful atom” and its destructive wartime counterpart. One of the first, and most influential, was James Bridges’ 1979 atomic energy thriller The China Syndrome.

“The China Syndrome” is a colloquial term for a very real threat in the event of a nuclear accident. It refers to a reactor accident wherein reactivity becomes so supercritical that operators cannot control it. The fuel gets so hot, it melts its mounting channels, control rods, and even exterior housing, burning through concrete and steel to seep unstoppably downwards – in fanciful terms, all the way to China (hence the name). This actually happened, to a degree, at Chernobyl: the reactor transformed into hundreds of tons of corium lava, eating through multiple basement levels and nearly breaching the building’s foundations before it cooled sufficiently to stop melting concrete. The danger, as with any China Syndrome situation, was that the fuel would reach groundwater, poisoning the land or creating a steam explosion that would blast radioactive material across an enormous area.

Curiously, there is no China Syndrome in The China Syndrome. Based primarily on a 1970 accident at the Dresden Nuclear Power Station in Illinois, the film follows reporter Kimberly Wells (Jane Fonda) and cameraman Richard Adams (Michael Douglas) after they witness an accident while reporting at a California nuclear power plant.  ………….

Predictably, the nuclear industry had a fiery reaction. Westinghouse executive John Taylor described the film as “an overall character assassination of an entire industry.” Nuclear experts generally agreed that the film’s specific events were highly improbable (if not entirely impossible), but also that an inherent clash exists between earning corporate profits and spending the money required to keep reactors safe. The industry may have been correct to debate the film’s finer technical points or melodramatic ending, but it’s hard to argue that unchecked capitalism doesn’t encourage corner-cutting.

On that note, it’s worth noting, that The China Syndrome’s institutional failure is near-identical to that which contributed to the Chernobyl disaster. Both saw powerful organisations covering up disastrous mistakes made in the name of cost-efficiency, but they come from opposite ends of the ideological spectrum. One comes from American capitalism, where making money and gaining power comes first and safety regulations are a costly hassle. The other comes from Soviet communism, where saving money and maintaining power came first and safety regulations were a costly hassle. Personal and institutional selfishness knows no political boundaries, and both all-powerful states and all-powerful corporations are prone to malfeasance.

All the industry’s rebuttal ultimately proved ill-advised, of course, as less than two weeks after the film’s release, a reactor underwent a partial meltdown at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station. Still the most serious nuclear accident in US history, the accident caused no immediate deaths, but the radiation leakage may have contributed to cancers, and the fourteen years of cleanup cost a billion dollars. More importantly, it caused opinion to solidify around the The China Syndrome’s thesis: that the nuclear energy industry could not be trusted with nuclear energy……… https://birthmoviesdeath.com/2019/06/28/how-the-china-syndrome-brought-down-the-nuclear-power-industry

June 29, 2019 Posted by | media, USA | Leave a comment

HBO TV series ” Chernobyl” causing great interest in Iran

With ‘Chernobyl,’ Iranians talk other people’s nuclear problems, for a change, Al-Monitor, Rohollah Faghihi June 26, 2019 Iranians, who have been under pressure from the United States over the country’s nuclear program, are enjoying discussing someone else’s nuclear problems for a change. The recently released HBO miniseries “Chernobyl,” focusing on the catastrophic nuclear accident in 1986, has proved to be wildly popular in Iran.

Despite four decades of enmity between Iran and the United States, Iranians have always been big fans of American television series. …… https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2019/06/chernobyl-series-raises-debates-in-iran.html

June 27, 2019 Posted by | Iran, media | Leave a comment

Investigative journalism lives- when it comes to the issue of nuclear decommissioning

Meet the nuclear plant project reporters    https://www.lohud.com/story/news/investigations/2019/06/19/nuclear-plant-project-team/1352103001/ Rockland/Westchester Journal News  June 19, 2019

A team of veteran reporters from the USA TODAY NETWORK’s Northeast Metro Group teamed up to investigate who is getting the billions of dollars set aside to clean up the nation’s closed and decommissioned nuclear plants and how that process is being handled.…

A team of veteran reporters from the USA TODAY NETWORK’s Northeast Metro Group teamed up to investigate who is getting the billions of dollars set aside to clean up the nation’s closed and decommissioned nuclear plants and how that process is being handled.

With the nuclear power industry shifting into decommissioning mode, the nation’s plants are facing closure, leaving a raft of questions and concerns in its wake.

Our reporters who tackled the project:

Tom Zambito has been an investigative reporter with The Journal News/lohud and the USA TODAY NETWORK since August 2015.

In a 33-year career, Zambito has had stints at The Record, the New York Daily News, Newsday and the Star-Ledger (nj.com). His current focus is transportation and energy.

Zambito’s work has been recognized with more than three dozen writing awards, among them honors from press associations in three states as well as Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE), The Associated Press, the Deadline Club, the American Bar Association, the National Press Club, the New York City Police Department Emerald Society and the Society of the Silurians.

Amanda Oglesby is an Ocean County, New Jersey, native who covers the environment for the Asbury Park Press and the USA TODAY NETWORK New Jersey. She has covered the Oyster Creek nuclear power plant, the Pine Barrens and other news for the Press since 2008. She is a Rutgers University graduate who studied journalism and environmental policy before starting her reporting career. In 2014, she was one of two Gannett reporters who were finalists in the Deadline Club’s “Public Service Award” for their work on the Asbury Park Press’ “Heroin at the Shore” series.

Christopher Maag is a columnist for The Record. His columns focus on the overlooked characters of New Jersey and the Northeast, bringing readers into the lives of a chopper-riding chihuahua, a convicted drug cartel strategist and the farmer whose field overlooks the Lincoln Tunnel. Formerly a regular contributor to The New York Times and TIME, he has written for daily newspapers, monthly magazines and alternative news weeklies, winning awards for writing and investigative reporting. A graduate of Columbia University School of Journalism, he lives in Queens.

Samantha Ruland is the Pennsylvania issues reporter for the York Daily Record and USA TODAY NETWORK. During her time at YDR, she’s worked to understand and report on the issues that affect the people of central Pennsylvania and beyond, while keeping a close eye on legislation in Harrisburg. She was part of a team of reporters whose work received first place in public service by the Pennsylvania Associated Press Media Editors contest for chronicling the ongoing child sexual abuse by priests in the state.

Frank Esposito is a data reporter for The Journal News/lohud and the USA TODAY NETWORK. He writes about technology and systems running awry and what happens to the people caught in their path. Frank was part of the team that won the New York State Associated Press Association First Amendment award for coverage of the governor of New York’s political donations. He studied international political economics and journalism at Penn State University.

June 20, 2019 Posted by | investigative journalism, USA | Leave a comment

“Chernobyl” TV series – was drawn from the testimony of those who were there

The Chernobyl miniseries is a compelling account of how the disaster unfolded, based largely on the testimony of those present, most of whom died soon afterwards. It rings true but only scratches the surface of another, more cruel reality– that, in their desperation to save face, the Soviets were willing to sacrifice any number of men, women and children.  

The truth about Chernobyl? I saw it with my own eyes.   Guardian, 16 June 19, Kim Willsher reported on the world’s worst nuclear disaster from the Soviet Union. HBO’s TV version only scratches the surface, she says.There is a line in the television series Chernobyl that comes as no surprise to those of us who reported on the 1986 nuclear disaster in what was the Soviet Union – but that still has the power to shock:

“The official position of the state is that global nuclear catastrophe is not possible in the Soviet Union.”

It was not possible, so in the days and months after the world’s worst such accident, on 26 April, the Kremlin kept up its pretence. It dissembled, deceived and lied. I began investigating Chernobyl in the late 1980s after Ukrainian friends insisted authorities in the USSR were covering up the extent of the human tragedy of those – many of them children – contaminated by radiation when the nuclear plant’s Reactor 4 exploded, blasting a cloud of poisonous fallout across the USSR and a large swathe of Europe.

When photographer John Downing and I first visited, the Soviet Union, then on its last political legs, was still in denial about what happened despite president Mikhail Gorbachev’s new era of glasnost. Continue reading →

June 17, 2019 Posted by | media, Resources -audiovicual, Ukraine | Leave a comment

“Chernobyl” TV series gets high rating, highly viewed in Russia and Ukraine

BBC 12th June 2019 , 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.      https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-48580177

June 15, 2019 Posted by | Kazakhstan, media, Resources -audiovicual, Russia | Leave a comment

TV Drama “Chernobyl” shows chilling reality of contemporary politics and its “war on truth”

Mazin says he intended Chernobyl as a comment on contemporary politics, and specifically on what he calls the “war on truth”. The subtext is relatively obvious: knowledge painstakingly acquired by scientists is discarded when it is politically inconvenient.

the topicality of Chernobyl derives from the inescapable fact that the bureaucracy’s inhuman behaviour is so familiar to us. The fatuous speeches about socialist morality shown in Chernobyl are just that country’s equivalent of our paeans to free markets and free people.

it is easy to recognise the system we have today: a managerial society run by bosses and bureaucrats who lie and kill to maintain their social dominance, and who threaten the whole world as long as they remain in power. The system of class domination and exploitation portrayed in Chernobyl lives on in free-market form today.

The Horrifying True Scale of the Chernobyl Disaster

Chernobyl: an anti-capitalist nuclear horror story  https://redflag.org.au/node/6814, Daniel Taylor

09 June 2019 Even before its broadcast run had concluded, Craig Mazin’s five-part TV drama, Chernobyl, was acclaimed as a classic. It currently stands as the highest rated series of all time on IMDb, and has been watched by millions in the US and around the world despite airing on a bad schedule and relying heavily on word-of-mouth promotion.

A short-run series about an industrial accident that took place 33 years ago in a state that no longer exists might seem an odd candidate for such popularity. But, as Wired put it, “2019 needed a hit as bleak as Chernobyl”. It is a show that speaks to the concerns of its time.

At the time of the series’ airing, nuclear power is being rehabilitated as a solution to catastrophic global warming. The technology is back in the marketplace of ideas, while the generations traumatised by the meltdowns and near-misses continue to be dismissively diagnosed with “radiophobia”. The familiarity of the feeling that a cataclysmic environmental and social disaster is unfolding right around us, while the administrators of our society look the other way, is impossible not to recognise.

Continue reading →

June 10, 2019 Posted by | 2 WORLD, media, politics international | Leave a comment

Whistleblowers will be effectively silenced: the result of Australia’s police raids on journalists

It sends shockwaves through your life’: how the media raids will silence whistleblowers, Guardian  Christopher Knaus @knausc 9 Jun 2019

Whistleblowers who revealed government wrongdoing already face jail. This week’s raids will only deter others from coming forward  “……… The warrant listed  David McBride as the police’s first subject of interest. McBride unleashed powerful forces when he decided to go public years ago with what he discovered as a military lawyer serving in Afghanistan.

Those forces have already exacted a crippling toll.

“[My ex-wife] would probably say – and I think there’s an element of truth in it – it killed David McBride,” he says. “The man that she married was killed by the defence force, and I’m someone who’s different.

“Doing something like this, taking on the whole government, it sends shockwaves through your life, and not much survives, really.”

Wednesday’s raid on the ABC prompted outrage among civil rights groups, transparency campaigners, journalists and unions. It came just a day after federal police searched the home of the News Corp reporter Annika Smethurst, searching for documents related to her coverage of proposed new surveillance powers for the Australian Signals Directorate. 2GB host Ben Fordham’s revelation about asylum seeker boats attempting to reach Australia from Sri Lanka is also the subject of a home affairs investigation, as the department attempts to identify his source.

The raids have not occurred in isolation. Multiple whistleblowers who revealed government wrongdoing are currently being pursued through the courts with alarming vigour.

The government is prosecuting Witness K and Bernard Collaery, who revealed an unlawful spy operation against Timor-Leste during oil negotiations. Richard Boyle, the tax office worker who revealed the government’s heavy-handed approach to recovering debts, faces a long stint in jail if convicted.

Assoc Prof Joseph Fernandez, a journalism lecturer at Curtin University, has spent years studying source protection and the Australian media. He says the consequences of this week’s raids are clear, regardless of whether journalists are charged.

“Such raids, regardless of what happens here to journalists or to others, will have an immeasurable censoring effect on contact people have with journalists,” Fernandez says.

“In my research in this area over the years, it was clear that even senior public servants are apprehensive about having contact with journalists, even about mundane things, in the wake of laws that enable the authorities to track down sources.”

The McBride matter had been bubbling away for some time before Wednesday’s raid. Guardian Australia understands police have been talking to the ABC since at least September, trying to find a way to access the documents without resorting to a very public raid. …….

Denis Muller, from the University of Melbourne’s Centre for Advancing Journalism, says arguments about the police operating at arm’s length from government miss the point.    “The point is that the politicians have constructed a repressive legal regime designed to protect the executive branch of government, impede accountability to the public and exert a chilling effect on the press,” Muller wrote in the Conversation……….    https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/jun/08/it-sends-shockwaves-through-your-life-how-the-media-raids-will-silence-whistleblowers

June 10, 2019 Posted by | AUSTRALIA, civil liberties, media | Leave a comment

Mini series Chernobyl unfolds the horror of radiation sickness – a warning for the future

‘A horrible way to die’: how Chernobyl recreated a nuclear meltdown, Guardian,  Julie McDowall, 5 June 19, 

From ‘painting on’ radiation sickness to making the explosion less ‘Die Hard’, the acclaimed drama has gone to great lengths to evoke the chaos and terror of the Soviet-era disaster.

We were lucky to have survived the Cold War without a nuclear attack. The pop culture of that chilly era warned what the bomb would do: the crisping of the skin; the slow agony of radiation sickness; the pollution of the land; and the death of cities.

The bomb didn’t explode, but some people experienced a fragment of this horror. The Chernobyl disaster of 1986 brought explosions, radiation sickness, evacuations, contaminated earth and, finally, medals awarded and memorials erected. It was war after all – but not against the west; this was another type of nuclear enemy.

Sky Atlantic/HBO’s drama Chernobyl unfolds over five distressing episodes that show the 1986 explosion was more than just another disaster in a decade horribly cluttered with them: it was a ghastly taste of nuclear war, a monstrous cover-up and, finally, an event that helped bring down the Soviet Union.

So it is fitting that the series begins with the explosion, as if to get it out of the way so that we might focus on what happens afterwards………..

Surprisingly, Parker didn’t look to photos of Hiroshima or Nagasaki victims for examples of radiation damage, as he suspects these were tempered by wartime propaganda. He went instead to medical textbooks, and this allowed him to pioneer a technique for Chernobyl where he “layered” the skin: painting the actors’ bodies with wounds, then putting a semi-translucent layer on top, giving the impression that sores are forcing themselves to the surface as the body degrades from within. The effect is dreadful to see. Yet, Parker was strict in saying these men must not be relegated to Hollywood “zombies”, and he explains that the director made sure sympathy stayed with these characters: even as they lie rigid on the bed, gurgling and fading, they still speak, and a wife may still hold her husband’s rotting fingers.

“It’s the worst way to die,” says Parker. “Beyond anything you can imagine. The most horrible way to die. I think it’s the worst, in line with medieval torture.” What makes it particularly atrocious is that the victims were denied pain relief. In the latter stages of radiation sickness you cannot inject morphine, he explains. “The walls of the veins are breaking down.”

So the Chernobyl disaster produced agonising deaths without pain-relieving drugs, which brings us back to the horror of nuclear war. Plans for the NHS after a nuclear attack show drug stockpiles would quickly be exhausted, and those who were hopelessly injured would be allowed to die without the tiny mercy of a supermarket paracetamol.

Chernobyl is a compelling and brilliantly realised drama, but it’s also a warning – of the dangers of lies, arrogance and complacency, and of nuclear war itself.

The final episode of Chernobyl airs Tuesday, 9pm on Sky Atlantic. The whole series is available to view on Sky Go and NowTV

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/jun/04/one-day-your-skin-just-slips-off-how-chernobyl-restaged-nuclear-disaster  

June 8, 2019 Posted by | health, media, Resources -audiovicual, Ukraine | Leave a comment

Australia’s Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton ‘didn’t know anything” about police raids on media offices and home. Really???

Peter Dutton denies prior knowledge of AFP raids on ABC and News Corp, Guardian, Sarah Martin and Kate Lyons 5 Jun 2019  

Following two consecutive days of raids on journalists who had reported on defence matters, Dutton sought to distance himself from the police investigations, saying they were independent from government./////https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/jun/05/peter-dutton-denies-prior-knowledge-of-afp-raids-on-abc-and-news-corp?CMP=soc_567&fbclid=IwA

June 8, 2019 Posted by | AUSTRALIA, media, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

Chernobyl miniseries could not be made in the real Chernobyl wasteland – radiation would have damaged the film kit

‘Radiation would have damaged the film kit’: where Sky’s Chernobyl was really shot,  Telegraph UK, 7 June 19   Last night saw the last episode in Sky’s riveting drama about the 1986 Chernobyl power plant disaster, one of the worst man-made catastrophes ever to befall our planet. It’s not often The Telegraph dishes out five-star TV reviews, but this show earned it.Along with stellar performances from the largely-British cast, no expense was spared to bring the Soviet-era nuclear warning tale to life visually; from the costumes and stage make-up to the backdrops and special effects. But where was it filmed?

Not at the real Chernobyl wasteland that still stands today in what is now Ukraine, but rather in Lithuania, mainly at Chernobyl’s sister power plant, Ignalina, with other portions filmed in suitably… (subscribers only) https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/europe/lithuania/articles/chernobyl-tv-show-real-filming-locations/

June 8, 2019 Posted by | media, radiation, Ukraine | Leave a comment

New Documentary Explores Chelsea Manning’s Fight To Live Her Truth

XY Chelsea (2019) Official Trailer | Chelsea Manning SHOWTIME Documentary

In Showtime’s “XY Chelsea,” filmmaker Tim Travers Hawkins aims to reframe the media’s narrative around the Army whistleblower, who identifies as transgender.  HuffPost By Curtis M. Wong, 5 June 19  Filmmaker Tim Travers Hawkins aims to relay former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning’s “sense of principles and sacrifice” in a new, sure-to-be-controversial documentary.

“XY Chelsea,” which premiered at the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival in May and airs Friday on Showtime, is a compilation of interviews and behind-the-scenes footage of Manning, who was jailed for about seven years for leaking more than 750,000 classified diplomatic documents to WikiLeaks…… https://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/entry/xy-chelsea-manning-showtime-documentary_n_5cf672bfe4b0e8085e40b5e7

June 6, 2019 Posted by | civil liberties, media, Resources -audiovicual, USA | Leave a comment

Record viewing of HBO miniseries “Chernobyl”

CHERNOBYL Official Trailer 

Sky 2nd June 2019 , Without fanfare, Chernobyl has become unmissable TV. The Sky Atlantic show,
which concludes on Tuesday, is harrowing and unrelentingly bleak, with some
complicated science to get to grips with.

It is also a western-made drama about a disaster that occurred in the Soviet Union more than 30 years ago,
of which details such as the number of deaths are still debated. There was
much that could go wrong. And ultimately, we know how the story pans out.

But seemingly from nowhere, this five-part mini-series is now the show that
everyone is talking about. (Sorry, Game Of Thrones). After just three
episodes, Chernobyl topped film and TV database IMDB’s list of the greatest
250 TV shows of all time. It currently has a score of 9.7, based on more
than 96,000 votes. Fan-voted charts obviously have their problems and are
by no means definitive, but it is still quite an accolade for a drama
series just four weeks and four episodes old.

https://news.sky.com/story/how-chernobyl-quietly-topped-the-tv-charts-11732879

June 4, 2019 Posted by | media | Leave a comment

6th June- world premiere of movie ‘The Beginning of the End of Nuclear Weapons’

Beyond Nuclear 2nd June 2019 , At 7pm, on the 6thof June, at the Village East Cinema, in Lower Manhattan,
Pressenza International Press Agency, of which I am a co-director, will
host the World Premiere of our new documentary on the Treaty to Prohibit
Nuclear Weapons.

The title, The Beginning of the End of Nuclear Weapons, is
a reference to the speech made by Setsuko Thurlow to the assembled throng
of dignitaries and International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear weapons (ICAN)
campaigners, during her Nobel Laureate Speech in December 2017 when the
Peace Prize was awarded to ICAN. The film charts the story of the
development of the atomic bomb through to the negotiations to prohibit
nuclear weapons, and is told through the interventions of 14 people whose
roles have been key in the fields of activism and diplomacy.

https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2019/06/02/the-beginning-of-the-end-of-nuclear-weapons/

June 4, 2019 Posted by | ACTION, media, Resources -audiovicual, USA | Leave a comment

Accuracy of HBO’s “Chernobyl” mini series

“Chernobyl” the Mini-Series Faithfully Recreates the World’s Worst Nuclear Disaster   https://interestingengineering.com/chernobyl-the-mini-series-faithfully-recreates-the-worlds-worst-nuclear-disaster

HBO and Sky’s mini-series “Chernobyl” is a faithful retelling of the events of April 1986, when the world stood on the brink of disaster……..

An eye-opening retelling

Mazin said that Chernobyl arose out of his interest in writing something that addressed the fact that, “We are struggling with the global war on the truth.” For each episode, Mazin has created a podcast that can be found on Youtube.

For those who don’t know much about the disaster, the series is an eye-opener. For those who do know what happened, the series is a near-perfect recreation of the events that took place in Soviet Ukraine on the morning of April 27, 1986.

Researching for the truth

To create the series, Mazin consulted many different kinds of sources, “from government reports to first person accounts to scientific journals to historical works, photo essays.” And, he worked hard to avoid putting false drama into his scripts because as he said, “So much of what happens in the show is just shocking. It’s shocking to believe that that’s what happened.

Well, our feeling was if we started pushing the envelope on those things then we would diminish the impact of all the things that we were accurate about, so we stayed as accurate as we could.”

Location scouting for Soviet-era environment

The producers recreated Pripyat, the closest town to the disaster, in Fabijoniškės, a residential district of Vilnius, Lithuania. It retains an authentic Soviet atmosphere, and was used in the scenes where Pripyat is evacuated.

A twin to Chernobyl’s Reactor No. 4 was found at the decommissioned Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant at Visaginas, Lithuania. It was used for both exterior and interior shots. Ignalina is also a RBMK nuclear power reactor, the same type as the doomed Chernobyl Reactor No. 4. Several final scenes of the series were shot in Ukraine.

Public Response

The public’s response to Chernobyl has been overwhelmingly positive. The series has a 96 percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The critical consensus on the site says, “Chernobyl rivets with a creeping dread that never dissipates, dramatizing a national tragedy with sterling craft and an intelligent dissection of institutional rot.”

In his review in The Washington Post, Hank Stuever described the series as an “effective, no-nonsense and highly researched dramatization …” and said that it is “committed to a disciplined, truthful and scientific account.”

On the site Metacritic, based on 26 critics, Chernobyl has a weighted average score of 83 out of 100, indicating “universal acclaim”.

In her article in The Atlantic Sophie Gilbert says of the series, “Whether you apply its message to climate change, the ‘alternative facts’ administration of the current moment, or anti-vaccine screeds on Facebook, Mazin’s moral stands: The truth will eventually come out.”

June 3, 2019 Posted by | media, Resources -audiovicual | Leave a comment

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