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Chernobyl explained: Why was there so much denial about Chernobyl?


HBO and Sky Atlantic viewers watching the first episode of Chernobyl, which depicts the explosion of the nuclear reactor itself, have been left wondering how the workers could have had so much denial about what was happening. Chernobyl was also victim to another sort of denial, as officials first denied what had happened and later denied the true extent of the impact of the explosion. Chernobyl showrunner Craig Mazin, however, spoke at length about what his research while making the HBO and Sky series taught him about how there could be so much denial.

Why was there so much denial about Chernobyl?

On episode one of The Chernobyl Podcast, Mazin used the example of Anatoly Dyatlov’s (played by Paul Ritter) denial about what was happening while he was working in the control room as deputy chief-engineer of the nuclear power plant.

He said: “What we’re seeing repeatedly from Dyatlov is denial. That denial is real.

“These guys in the control room, what they hear and feel is that something blew up and almost immediately Dyatlov concludes that what’s happened is a control system tank has collected hydrogen and ignited and exploded.

“So what he is contemplating here is essentially a serious industrial accident, but by no means a nuclear holocaust.

HOW MANY EPISODES ARE IN CHERNOBYL?

“For the longest time I wrestled with this, just as I think Dyatlove must have been internally wrestling.

“What I forget and have to remind myself all the time is the word Chernobyl means a million things to us all in an instant.

“But right before it blew up it meant nothing that nuclear reactor and in fact no nuclear reactor had ever thought to be capable of exploding.

“So I tried to integrate that into my understanding of the denial.”

HOW HISTORICALLY ACCURATE IS CHERNOBYL?

Simply put, the workers of Chernobyl were in so much denial about the explosion because it was just not believed that something of that scale could ever happen.

We see this in the series when a number of the workers repeatedly deny there can be carbon among the rubble.

However, this denial is part of a larger constellation of denial that sprung up around the incident.

The Soviet Union was also responsible of a large scale denial that the incident took place.

WILL THERE BE ANOTHER SERIES OF CHERNOBYL?

As The Washington Post wrote in 2016: “Compounding the catastrophe was the lack of transparency from the Soviet Union. In the days that followed, Soviet officials refused to elaborate on the extent of the disaster.”

What followed was a campaign of denial: For example, a Soviet embassy official said at the time: “The problem is getting better. It is not out of hand. It is improving. But unfortunately, it is not over yet.”

These series of denials mean that we have never received an accurate death toll for how many people died as a result of the events at Chernobyl, with numbers varying from 4,000 to over 90,000.

However, as the scroll at the end of Chernobyl says: “The official Soviet death toll, unchanged since 1987 is 31.”

Chernobyl is streaming on NOW TV now

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