Good Evening Charles,
Thanks, I'll view this mini series on DVD. Looks fascinating.

On the other hand, say what you will about the GOP but I wouldn't call it the equivalent of the Soviet Communist Party circa 1985-1986 or Fox News which I don't view the equivalent of Izvestia or Tass. The USA was and remains a multi-party state while the Soviet Union was a one party state its entire existence. And we have freedom of the press while the USSR never did.

Also, I shall never watch on TV the Emmys, Oscars, Grammys or Tony awards. They are now largely "bully pulpits" largely for liberal causes. I wouldn't watch them for any other political POV as well. They are self-indulgent and a waste of time.

Once again we agree, Charles. Chernobyl was some fine, fine television - low-keyed and muted, but exquisite performances and writing made it almost holy.On another plane of existence, I really enjoyed Fosse/Verdon too. Is there anything Michelle Williams can't do? Not a terrible year on TV though there still is a lot of crap.

I agree in Chernobyl deserving the Emmy, but not for this narrow a reason. It works well on many levels.

The Chernobyl reactors (some of which have remained operating for decades after one of them blew up) were not poorly designed. A group of engineers who did not understand the design were conducting experiments on the reactor in question. Every time an alarm sounded, they silenced it. They eventually pushed it past the safety limits, and it caught fire. This can happen anywhere. (The attempted cover-up and denial which took place immediately thereafter could happen anywhere, too.)

The only physical connection between this story and climate change is that nuclear power does not usually contribute carbon emissions to the biosphere. In the Chernobyl disaster, it did, because the core of the reactor was a block of carbon which caught fire.

@7: You're saying the RBMK reactor didn't have design flaws? If so, that's just wrong.

@8: I didn’t say the reactor didn’t have design flaws. I noted design flaws did not cause the disaster. The engineers mishandling the controls did that. Any piece of technology may fail if used incorrectly, flaws or no.

If you’re looking for statements that are “just wrong,” then try these:

“...a badly made nuclear reactor cracked, ... and went through a meltdown.”

@7 @9

For systems where safety is critical, a design that allows operation beyond safety limits is a poor design. The no. 4 reactor at Chernobyl was a commercial reactor, not research equipment. There was absolutely no excuse to design it without failsafes well below critical operating thresholds.

The reason RBMK reactors throughout Russia were retrofitted after Chernobyl is precisely because their design was belatedly recognized as inadequate. The reactors were poorly designed.

@10: “The no. 4 reactor at Chernobyl was a commercial reactor, not research equipment.“

Yes, and when engineers (not power plant operators!) abused it as research equipment — a purpose for which it had never been designed — an entirely predictable and preventable disaster then happened. (And the engineers had to abuse it for quite some time, ignoring alarms and defeating safety features, before it finally caught fire.) Thank you for agreeing with me on that. The post facto design changes accomplished nothing but to add needless costs.

So: were the Boeing 767 aircraft which destroyed the World Trade Center also “poorly designed”?

(Don’t worry; we both know you won’t answer.)