Chernobyl 2019 Dr. Johan Renck Based on true events from April 1986 Chernobyl in the Soviet Union when the Valdimir lenin nuclear power plant resulted into absolute disaster leading to death of thousands.
(It’s hard to translate because it’s a song from the movie Sherina’s Adventure hahaha. It basically a song about two opposing parties who in the end becomes friend)
Happy 1-year anniversary (but I only watched them when all of the 5 episodes are concluded tho. Thus, a spike on number of jared doodles in June hahaha)
It was wonderful, the closest we could possibly get to the historic conference room where Legasov spoke and answered questions for hours.
A minor drawback was the fact that the souvenir’s booth of the IAEA is inside the complex, so as a visitor you only get there during a tour and then there’s no time to pause and shop ♀️.
But one of the participants of the tour actually worked at the IAEA and offered us to go back inside after the tour and buy us some souvenirs , the wonderful person, so nice of him!
I’m not so good with souvenirs, so I said “I just want a postcard” and what does he bring - and oh my gosh, @litttlesilkworm you gonna laugh about that one - a card with fricking roses on it . Come on, what are the chances?
Immediate throwback to our awesome convo, and all those that followed, from way back about Valoris, roses and their symbolism:
It’s just a straight up drawing and not nearly as creative as most of the work from ppl in this fandom haha, but haven’t drawn in a while and I’m awful at drawing without a direct reference, so y’all just get a lil Valera! It was quite interesting to draw Jared Harris, as I’ve drawn Richard Harris before but not him - the similarities really stand out when you’re concentrating on someone’s face that hard!
Below the cut: An alternate edit of the same drawing, as I don’t usually work on graph paper but I cant find the dot grid sketchbook I wanted, so I tried a couple different post-processing techniques. Also a WIP, and a warmup sketch from the same photoset.
Bilim adamı olmak naif olmaktır. Gerçeği aramaya o kadar odaklandık ki, gerçekte ne kadar az kişinin onu bulmamızı istediğini hiç görmedik. Fakat görsek de görmesek de, tercih etsek de etmesek de gerçek hep orada. Gerçek ihtiyaçlarımızı ve isteklerimizi umursamaz. Hükümetlerimizi umursamaz, ideolojilerimizi, inançlarımızı… her zaman pusuda bekler. Bu, sonunda, Çernobil'in hediyesi. Bir zamanlar, gerçeğin bedelinden korkuyordum… Şimdi sadece şunu soruyorum: ‘Yalanların bedeli nedir?’
A unique selection of Soviet press articles about the Chernobyl accident fell into my hands. Dozens of clippings, huge material collected from 1986 to 1988.
Just look at it.
I just have to turn this stuff into something worthwhile. Maybe even a book.
Today is the 36th anniversary of the Chernobyl accident.
It is difficult to shape thoughts. It is difficult now, after so many years, to reproduce everything that people were thinking about then. What they aspired to, what they lived for.
And people were different. It’s true.
Reading numerous testimonies of bravery, selflessness, courage… throwing away lies, tears, the pain of loss and sorrow, I ask myself again: if this accident happened again now, what would happen?
And I think the answer lies even in these days.
Because this question is not only about the accident, the damage, the dead, the culprits - it is a question of unity, consolidation of peoples - in the sake of a safe world.
Do most people need such a world now - ?
I want to believe that yes.
They need, of course, they do.
I’d like to quote here the doctor’s words that appeared in the play about Valery Legasov: «the task of every person is to prolong life.» Your own life - with working, taking care of yourself. Your children and loved ones - with love and care for them. Keeping the memory of the departed, we also prolong their life, because a person is alive as long as he is remembered.
Exactly three years have passed since the Chernobyl disaster. It was the largest nuclear power plant accident, which shocked the whole world with its scale and the consequences of which we will feel for another decade. It is known that the disaster was prevented only thanks to the courage, resourcefulness and hard work of many people. Among them was academician Valery Alekseevich Legasov– one of the main persons in the work on the elimination of the accident. Uncompromising and direct in assessing the causes of the disaster, he gained respect from Soviet and foreign experts. Our editorial board had an agreement with the academician about a meeting and a conversation on the nuclear power plant safety problems. Alas, fate had other plans. After Chernobyl, Legasov passed away under tragic circumstances. The academician’s speeches, fragments of which we present below, were recorded on Central Television by the journalist Igor Menzelintsev, who knew him well, but they never appeared on the screens and were not published. But the thoughts and statements of V.A. Legasov are more than relevant, because the problem of technology safety for humans and the environment has always stood and will stand before world science.
The last time Valery Alekseevich came to television was in July 1987 - before the very last vacation in his life. Friends asked him to come to Ostankino when a multi-part documentary for the 70th anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution was being prepared. They wanted to include Legasov’s speech in this film so that he would share his thoughts about perestroika. I immediately noticed how he had changed. The corridors of Ostankino are as long as at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. A year ago, Valery Alekseevich walked through its corridors with his usual fast gait. It wasn’t easy to keep up with him. But now here he was already walking with some other step. He didn’t even walk, but took steps…Everything that was filmed then was not included in the film. Well-deserved and worthy academicians are often can be disgraced. I remember when the shooting came to an end and we asked him:
- Valery Alekseevich, now one more piece. No question - Tell me what’s bothering you.
- Allright then…. Now… let’s go ahead…
«Quiet on the set! Action!» The recording has begun.
LEGASOV: I am most concerned about the following circumstance. Now the greatest concern is the creation of new facilities. There are often protests against the construction of a particular enterprise. Against the construction of, say, new nuclear power plants. I would like to comment on this. These new facilities that are currently being designed, being created now, they are often built on new principles, taking into account safety requirements and in this regard they pose a lesser danger than the huge infrastructure of the previously created industry, already existing, operating. And therefore, the greatest concern, as it seems to me, should be shown today about how the previously created industry – whether a chemical enterprise, nuclear, mining and metallurgical - how these old enterprises, built according to the old canons, without using today’s existing safety standards, can be brought back to normal. It is much more difficult to do this than to design new ones. These enterprises work, they employ a huge number of people, they are located near our cities, where many people live, or in these cities themselves. Therefore, the problem of bringing the established industry to a normal, from the point of view of safety, is one of the most complex and most important problems that requires a special approach and special attention.
Legasov had a special approach to our problems. But there was and is a special “approach” to his approach. These shots, these words of the academician, taken in close-up, with slightly trembling lips, said with pain and bitterness, were not included in this film. As well as other unique Chernobyl footage was not included in other films. One of the plots was prepared for a popular youth TV show two days after his death. The roll of film was already on the machine. But about 30 minutes before the start, the phone rang on the director’s console, and … another material went on the air.
There was a lot of gossip about Valery Alekseevich, and far from harmless…However, if some poured mud on Legasov and still doing it, then others almost praying, because he was clearly an extraordinary person. For many, Legasov’s name is inextricably connected with the concept of morality in science. For others, it is associated with the unexpectedly important topic of safety not only for nuclear power plants, but also for technical civilization as a whole.
In the summer of 1987, at the end of July, Valery Alekseevich, after being discharged the hospital, went to rest in Nida and, leaving, asked me to come for a few days and talk. Talking to Legasov is far from easy. I wanted to listen to him, and he, in his manner, strove to pass the word to the interlocutor in order to sum up later.
When I came to him, it turned out that he was back in the hospital, now in the city of Klaipeda, obviously unsuitable for his rank. It turned out that Legasov went by car to the Curonian Spit - 50 kilometers from the health resort. And when he was crossing the bay on the ferry, he got sick. Gritting his teeth, he still drove his wife and grandson to the place and surrendered to medicine which determined … a heart attack. He was taken back by ambulance along the same highway. The hospital made another diagnosis – it turned out that he didn’t have a heart attack, but an acute attack of appendicitis. He was immediately operated on…
That’s where I found him. He was walking along the gray, poor and hopeless hospital corridor, feeling exhausted and angry, with his face cut by a razor. Of course, he did not have time to take his belongings to the hospital, and, probably, the nurse couldn’t buy him any other razor, except for the creation of the “Sputnik” factory. Then I noticed to myself that even in this case, the safety of the razor turned out to be clearly consistent with modern reality…
LEGASOV: It’s fashionable now to talk about the wisdom of the ancients. Historians describe cases when warring tribes, making peace with each other, broke their arrows in front of each other. Of course, destroying modern missiles is much more difficult than breaking arrows with poisoned tips. We live in a probabilistic world. By signing non-proliferation treaties, limiting nuclear weapons and promising not to use them first, we only reduce the likelihood of their use. But if we destroy missiles, a class of missiles, then we can say that the probability of using this class of missiles is zero! It will be possible to say that one hundred percent safety from missiles of this class has been achieved. (This conversation took place several months before the signing of the INF Treaty, and, of course, V.A. Legasov could not have known about the document being prepared.)
But let’s imagine for a moment that humanity was able to destroy weapons. There are no weapons. And then what? Will life become completely safe? But after all, all missiles, bombs and airplanes are the product of the same technical world in which we all live today. And people built this world - the technical world - that surrounds us today, something that we used to call the technosphere, in general, in the name of solving … safety problems. They built it in order to protect themselves from hunger, cold, to increase the comfort of their existence. And as a result, they built such a complex, energy-saturated world that it itself began to pose a danger! Technical disasters can lead to much more trouble than those natural phenomena from which a person is protected with the help of technology. It would be extremely important to realize this fact…
People today hardly realize the fact that today we live in a world in which accidents cause damage comparable to damage from tsunamis, tornadoes, earthquakes… We were so proud of our achievements that our pride gradually turned into self-admiration, and then into complacency. We didn’t realize what destructive forces we had created ourselves, and then we didn’t know what we were doing, and then… This is similar to the attitude of parents towards their children. The parent is aware of the child’s dependence on himself, gently educates him and believes that it will always be like that. But the child grows up, becomes independent, and the parents do not understand this, do not consider him, believing that he is still a “sunny”, and the child begins to throw out “prominences”. Maybe we didn’t catch the moment of a qualitative transition of security into the danger that the technosphere brought us.
LEGASOV: The causes of many modern man-made disasters, the process of their development, the consequences – all this has been repeatedly described. In my opinion, all accidents, whether it is a nuclear facility, chemical production or other equipment, develop according to the same scenario. The accident develops according to certain stages. First, there is a quantitative accumulation of errors, then - a certain initiating moment, the formation of an emergency situation, then - unforeseen actions of personnel to stabilize the situation, and the emergency process turns out to be irreversible. So this is what happened in Bhopal, and in Chernobyl…
It is not without intent that I quote here all these general words of Legasov. Like all people who have reached not only the top, but also the highest ranks, he was able to keep within the limits, to tell the truth without saying too much,– the truth that he could and should have told. When experts from all over the world had already read the report on the accident at the 4th unit of the Chernobyl Nuclear power plant, when all radiation levels were calculated, etc., etc., our departmental censors demanded to punish the authors of the seven-hundred-page report on the Chernobyl accident prepared for the session of the IAEA experts - for disclosing state secrets…
Now there is a paradoxical situation in solving all issues related to improving the safety of existing and energy-saturated industries, as well as with the design and construction of new ones. There are really two opposing forces, so to speak, two “clans” - “silent ones” and “noisy ones”.
The “silent ones” include those who, by the nature of their work, are engaged in the design, construction and operation of various technological facilities: these are industrial ministries, design organizations, sectorial science.
The “noisy ones” - is, of course, the public concerned about the state and development of our industry, the safety of the world of technology for humans and the environment.
And these two “clans” cannot come to an agreement with each other. The first ones either cannot, or do not want, or are not at all capable of explaining their positions, their actions. The second, seeing this, gets even more excited, more and more often demand to close or not build one or another facility.
Nuclear power was no exception. The Chernobyl accident only added fuel to the flame. Sparks flew all over the world. Protests against the nuclear power plant have intensified. What will Legasov say about this? I’m listening to the tape again with my question: “Valery Alekseevich, when we talked about safety, technological safety, we have a slogan, God knows when and where it came from: "There should be no accident!” Everything seems to be right, everything is correct. This is how some meeting of party and economic activists at a nuclear power plant seems to be, where everyone entering the podium on behalf of apparatchiks, adjusters, dosimetrists and reactor workers yet again saying: “There can be no accident!” And if at least one of them says “An accident can happen!” - then one can be sure that a barrage of comrades’ criticism will fall on him until they completely “trample” the one who is walking out of step.“
LEGASOV: The slogan "There can be no accident!” - it’s like a quote from Lenin, taken out of context and stuck in wherever it is convenient and profitable. And our real, complete position should be as follows: “Proceeding from the fact that we live in a probabilistic world, and the very existence, the presence of one or another technological object makes an accident more or less likely, we (hereinafter – physicists, theorists, reactor engineers, designers, operators, etc.) have done everything in our power, and therefore there should not be an accident, since the probability of such is negligible. And if it does happen for some absolutely incredible reason, then we know how to protect the population and the surrounding area from dangerous effects». That’s how it should have been said and done! After all, when a person began to fight for safety, he proceeded from the fact that the danger really exists. We, having proclaimed that there should not be an accident, seem to have forgotten that there could be an accident! The issue of safety for humans and the environment of an industrial, technological facility is a question of acceptability and unacceptability of risk… Where and when is risk needed?
Alas, instead of a serious, reasoned, scientific conversation with their people, experts only occasionally condescend to such an argument: “Honestly, it won’t explode anymore!” No, in the era of democratization and glasnost, this argument no longer works. We need a dialogue between the people and specialists, which wouldn’t contain only “solemn statements”.
Raised by the system and being in the clan of the “silent”, V.A. Legasov after Chernobyl nevertheless said: “An accident can happen!”
LEGASOV: In general, of course, in a good way, this story should have been written. Such unpreparedness! Such carelessness! Such a fright. Like the forty-first year. Exactly. Forty-first year. Yes, even worse. With the same “Brest”, with the same courage, with the same desperation, but also with the same unpreparedness…
(…)
…My voice is on the tape again:
“Valery Alekseevich, why nod at Bhopal or Three Mile Island? Let me return, so to speak, to the our native’s country material. Don’t you think that our nuclear power industry has developed against the background of the general degradation of society?” He answered without hesitation.
LEGASOV: There is also this moment. First of all, this one. Developing technology, increasing capacity, we gradually etched out the humanistic principle, just brushed it off. The same Kurchatov was a man who, in his world, in his field, was guided by the ideals and himself developed the ideals of Tolstoy, Chekhov and Dostoevsky. He understood what he was doing, understood all the responsibility he bore to people. But to what extent they were ready to accept this legacy, to dispose of it is a big question. Willingly or not, people began to serve not humanistic ideals – I’m talking about the development of nuclear energy now - but the system, the development of nuclear energy, technology in general.
If you ask any engineer or researcher now why he is standing at the drawing board, then probably almost everyone will answer that they need to develop some kind of a unit or mechanism. No one will think that the entire technosphere was created and should be created by man to meet his needs, improve the quality of life, for human development, and for its safety… But is this a philosophical aspect, or if we talk about more specifically, closer to the topic… Humanistic values were excluded from the process of social production. The capacities of individual facilities were being increased. The objects were replicated quantitatively. The need for more and more personnel grew, the prestige of engineering work decreased. Moral values have descended to the level of consumer values… In the broadest sense, children have not stepped further than their parents, and maybe they even have degraded in comparison with their parents…
Replication of facilities, capacity building - all this, apparently, is intended to solve the problem of security, improve the quality of life. But in fact, this replicated “humanism” results in God knows what. All these accidents, so to speak, “actions”, give rise to counteractions – public statements, demands to close or not to build this or that enterprise. Such, one might say, are the demands of the “moderates”. Radical “green” demand to abandon technology, call on everyone to “free grazing”. It seems that both of them are naive and frivolous. And not in the form of manifestation, but essentially. Closing or abandoning the construction of an object is not the solution to all problems… Abandon the technology? How can humanity survive without it now?..
That’s where I finished transcribing the recordings with Academician Legasov.
But I will add from myself. How have we let in this case that now a person measures the safety of his existence on Earth on a scale where on the side of technogenic risk Chernobyl is the extreme point?
Scientists, specialists, power engineers and nuclear experts! Take off your vow of silence, tell us, your people, about what and how you are doing. Explain how you made mistakes when choosing the construction site of the Armenian, Rivne or Crimean NPP. Prove to us that you have the professional and moral right to lead modern industry, design and build new complex productions. Explain what are the possibilities to facilitate the life of a modern person and reduce the natural, socio-economic and man-made risk of human survival. Tell us what this risk is, and we will all choose for ourselves: which risk is acceptable for us and which is not, how we live in a fast and complex technically and energy-saturated world…
Today I’d like to show you this rather unusual and rare book.
A large and colorful booklet, the text is printed in two languages - Russian and English - about the Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy.
Publishing house: Atomenergoexport
The year of issue is not specified anywhere, but I presume that this book was released in the late 70s, between 1976 and 1981, since Valery Legasov is mentioned in it as a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences, he held this position during this period (later becoming a full member of the Academy).
So, what is this book about?
It describes the main lines of the scientific and technological activities of the Institute, tell the reader about the most interesting investigations carried out at its laboratories, about diverse creative life of the scientists, specialists and workers who “through their work bring the future closer to the present”.
The booklet contains many inserts with drawings of reactors and a number installations designed and used at the Institute in various investigations.
In addition, I’d like to draw your attention to the design - golden inserts and emblems for each section of the book look absolutely amazing.
Also, here we can find a couple of photos of Valery Legasov, which we have never seen before.
This photo - a screenshot from the documentary - was obviously taken on the same day and in the same location - in the office of Valery Alekseevich at the Kurchatov Institute.
Today I’d like to share with you a book about Chernobyl that I recently bought, and it took its place on my Chernobyl bookshelf (tbh, there is no space left there).
It is called “Ймення зорi Чорнобиль» (The name of the star Chernobyl).
This book-photo-album was released in 1996 in honor of the tenth anniversary of the accident. Captions are written in Ukrainian, and since I have been very interested in this language lately, it is a great pleasure for me to read them.
Here are some pictures from the book.
Picture with V.A. Legasov
B.E. Scherbina
The book also published a letter from Valery Khodemchuk’s mother to her son.
And I couldn’t hold back the tears while reading it…
