The Cost of Lies, The Futility of Truth
Dec. 22nd, 2022 03:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
canyonwalkerIt's been a few days since I wrote about the HBO miniseries Chernobyl. I was hoping to be done with it before we leave on a short holiday vacation tomorrow. It looks like that's not going to happen now. Anyway, I left off on Monday with Liquidators, Robots, and Bio-Robots, which was about the extended cleanup after stabilizing the still-highly radioactive exposed reactor core. That covered most of the way through episode 4 of the 5 episode series.
Episode 4 ends with an interesting private conversation between the three main characters Valery Legasov, Boris Shcherbina, and Ulana Khomyuk. It's part of a plot thread that's not resolved until early in episode 5, so I wanted to finish everything else from ep. 4 first.
The IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) convened a conference in Vienna, Austria, in August 1986 to discuss the Chernobyl disaster. Legasov would be the lead scientific representative from the USSR... and thus the person in the "hot seat" who'll have to answer— or conspicuously not answer— the world's concerns about the reactor explosion.
In this well-acted conversation Legasov wavers on how much of the truth to tell. Part of him totally wants to tell the truth, including the very inconvenient truth that there are design defects in the widely used reactor architecture the Soviets have known about for years and covered up. Another part of him frets that it'd be futile. If he exposes too much embarrassing information the state will deny it and discredit him and nothing will get fixed.
Shcherbina and Khomyuk play the demon and angel on Legasov's shoulders. Khomyuk appeals to his morality: if he allows the truth to remain secret, the USSR will keep running numerous existing reactors just like Chernobyl and building new ones, and operators won't know how to avoid the problems that caused the explosion. Shcherbina isn't opposed to telling the truth, per se, but warns of the risks. Not only will the state deny it and discredit Legasov if he goes public with the information in Austria, they'll punish him. He could get a bullet. Best case, prison. And his family and friends would be punished, too. Shcherbina recommends addressing the design problems through internal channels; Khomyuk points out that internal channels already failed.
Ultimately Legasov threads the needle at Vienna. He tells way more of the truth than the international community expects from the USSR. In particular he's frank about gross mistakes made by the operators. At the same time, he holds back enough to keep the Central Party satisfied and not embarrass the Soviet system as dysfunctional or dishonest. He doesn't talk about the design flaws or gaps in training and documentation. This leads the IAEA in its report to place the blame fully on terrible mistakes by plant operators and sets up dramatic tension for Legasov's character in the 5th episode as he grapples with knowing that the design flaws must be talked about more widely or they'll be swept back under the rug— allowing more accidents on the scale of Chernobyl to occur.
Episode 4 ends with an interesting private conversation between the three main characters Valery Legasov, Boris Shcherbina, and Ulana Khomyuk. It's part of a plot thread that's not resolved until early in episode 5, so I wanted to finish everything else from ep. 4 first.
The IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) convened a conference in Vienna, Austria, in August 1986 to discuss the Chernobyl disaster. Legasov would be the lead scientific representative from the USSR... and thus the person in the "hot seat" who'll have to answer— or conspicuously not answer— the world's concerns about the reactor explosion.
In this well-acted conversation Legasov wavers on how much of the truth to tell. Part of him totally wants to tell the truth, including the very inconvenient truth that there are design defects in the widely used reactor architecture the Soviets have known about for years and covered up. Another part of him frets that it'd be futile. If he exposes too much embarrassing information the state will deny it and discredit him and nothing will get fixed.
Shcherbina and Khomyuk play the demon and angel on Legasov's shoulders. Khomyuk appeals to his morality: if he allows the truth to remain secret, the USSR will keep running numerous existing reactors just like Chernobyl and building new ones, and operators won't know how to avoid the problems that caused the explosion. Shcherbina isn't opposed to telling the truth, per se, but warns of the risks. Not only will the state deny it and discredit Legasov if he goes public with the information in Austria, they'll punish him. He could get a bullet. Best case, prison. And his family and friends would be punished, too. Shcherbina recommends addressing the design problems through internal channels; Khomyuk points out that internal channels already failed.
Ultimately Legasov threads the needle at Vienna. He tells way more of the truth than the international community expects from the USSR. In particular he's frank about gross mistakes made by the operators. At the same time, he holds back enough to keep the Central Party satisfied and not embarrass the Soviet system as dysfunctional or dishonest. He doesn't talk about the design flaws or gaps in training and documentation. This leads the IAEA in its report to place the blame fully on terrible mistakes by plant operators and sets up dramatic tension for Legasov's character in the 5th episode as he grapples with knowing that the design flaws must be talked about more widely or they'll be swept back under the rug— allowing more accidents on the scale of Chernobyl to occur.
