HBO series Chernobyl: What’s fact, what’s fiction?

If you lived through the 1980s as an adult in the United States, you heard about the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster in Ukraine (then in the USSR), the worst such acknowledged disaster of its kind at the time. Ronald Reagan was president of the US; Mikhail Gorbachev was general secretary of the ruling communist party. Despite widespread analyses, investigations, and reports, there is still an element of distrust about the impacts of the explosion and fires that blew a small part of the reactor core into the atmosphere. The HBO series is riveting so far—I’ve watched four of the episodes.

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