🕷️ Crawler Inspector

URL Lookup

Direct Parameter Lookup

Raw Queries and Responses

1. Shard Calculation

Query:

Response:

Calculated Shard: 84 (from laksa097)

2. Crawled Status Check

Query:

curl -X POST \
  'http://laksa084.int.ahrefs:8124/' \
  -H 'Content-Type: text/plain' \
  -H 'X-ClickHouse-Database: crawler3' \
  -H 'Authorization: Basic YXBpOg==' \
  -d 'SELECT getAhrefsURLFromUnparsed(src_unparsed) AS found_url, ifNull(toUnixTimestamp(download_stamp), 0) AS crawl_time, ifNull(toUnixTimestamp(props_url_first_seen), 0) AS first_indexed_time, download_http_code AS http_code, src_unparsed AS src_unparsed, src_root_hash AS src_root_hash, history_drop_reason AS history_drop_reason, meta_title AS meta_title, meta_descriptions AS meta_descriptions, attrs_boilerpipe_text AS attrs_boilerpipe_text, attrs_markdown AS attrs_markdown, attrs_readable_markdown AS attrs_readable_markdown, meta_canonical AS meta_canonical FROM crawler3.page_info_local FINAL PREWHERE (src_root_hash, src_unparsed) IN ((getAhrefsRootHashFromUnparsed(getAhrefsUnparsedNoserviceFromURL(\'https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/02/arts/television/chernobyl-hbo.html\')), getAhrefsUnparsedNoserviceFromURL(\'https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/02/arts/television/chernobyl-hbo.html\'))) FORMAT JSONEachRow'

Response:

{"found_url":"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2019\/06\/02\/arts\/television\/chernobyl-hbo.html","crawl_time":1772654063,"first_indexed_time":1559493847,"http_code":200,"src_unparsed":"com,nytimes!www,\/2019\/06\/02\/arts\/television\/chernobyl-hbo.html s443","src_root_hash":"4566504020376537684","history_drop_reason":null,"meta_title":"Plenty of Fantasy in HBO’s ‘Chernobyl,’ but the Truth Is Real - The New York Times","meta_descriptions":["Ahead of the series finale, a science writer who has toured the site of the 1986 nuclear disaster weighs in."],"attrs_boilerpipe_text":"Advertisement\nSKIP ADVERTISEMENT\nAhead of the series finale, a science writer who has toured the site of the 1986 nuclear disaster weighs in.\nA scene from the HBO mini-series “Chernobyl,” about the worst disaster in the history of nuclear power.\nCredit...\nHBO\nJune 2, 2019\nHenry Fountain is a science writer on the Climate desk of The New York Times. He toured the Chernobyl plant and the exclusion zone around it in 2014.\nThe first thing to understand about the\nHBO mini-series “Chernobyl,”\nwhich concludes its five-part run on Monday, is that a lot of it is made up. But here’s the second, and more important, thing: It doesn’t really matter.\nThe explosion and fire at Chernobyl’s Unit 4 reactor on April 26, 1986, was an extraordinarily messy and grim event, a radioactive “dirty” bomb on a scale that no one — certainly not anyone in the Soviet Union — was prepared for. It remains the\nworst disaster\nin the history of nuclear power, killing more than 30 people initially (and more in the years that followed, though the numbers are much disputed) and spreading radioactive contamination across large swaths of Soviet and European territory.\nIn the immediate panicked aftermath, and in the months of crisis and confusion until the completion seven months later of the concrete-and-steel sarcophagus that entombed the reactor’s lethal remains, the heroes and villains numbered in the hundreds, and the supporting cast in the hundreds of thousands.\nThe producers of the mini-series don’t sanitize the disaster (sometimes the gore even goes a little too far: The radiation victims are often covered in blood for some reason). Instead, they simplify. They leave the grim alone, but the demands of Hollywood, and of production budgets, take a toll on the messy.\nImage\nIn the show, a fire rages at the Unit 4 reactor. \nCredit...\nHBO\nThat’s not to say there aren’t many touches of verisimilitude. The rooftop scene in which conscripts have just seconds to toss radioactive debris to the ground is as otherworldly as it must have seemed to those who were there three decades ago. And the Unit 4 control room is faithfully re-created, from the control-rod dials on the walls to the white coats and caps worn by the operators. (\nWhen I visited\nthe adjacent Unit 3 control room five years ago, I had to wear the same odd outfit, which seemed more appropriate for a bakery than a nuclear power plant.)\nBut if you didn’t know much about Chernobyl you could be forgiven if, after watching, you thought the entire response and cleanup was run by two people, Valery Legasov and Boris Shcherbina, aided valiantly by a third, Ulana Khomyuk.\nYou could also be forgiven if you thought they were all real characters. Legasov and Shcherbina were real, though their roles were twisted and amplified\nto meet the script’s need to keep things moving. Khomyuk, on the other hand, was made out of whole cloth, and her actions strain credulity, from traveling to Chernobyl, uninvited, to investigate the accident to being in the presence of Mikhail Gorbachev at the Kremlin not much later.\nThe producers mention some folderol at the end, that Khomyuk was a composite character created to represent all of the scientists who helped investigate the disaster. Fine, I guess. But much of the rest of “Chernobyl” gets the simplistic Hollywood treatment, too.\nImage\nFrom left, Stellan Skarsgard as Boris Shcherbina, Jared Harris as Valery Legasov and Emily Watson as Ulana Khomyuk.\nCredit...\nLiam Daniel\/HBO\nImage\nValery Legasov, head of the Soviet delegation at the Chernobyl Review Conference in Vienna, Aug. 29, 1986.\nCredit...\nRudi Blaha\/Associated Press\nThere are the brave, doomed firefighters, ignorant of the radiation hazards they encountered (though nobody climbed up over the reactor debris, as portrayed in the series; they were working the roof to prevent fires from spreading to the undamaged Unit 3). The plucky, can-do miners, brought in to excavate under the reactor to stop the meltdown, stripping naked to get the job done (the series doesn’t say this, but their work ended up largely for naught). The no-nonsense helicopter pilots, risking radiation sickness to drop their loads of lead, boron and sand on the reactor (while one helicopter did crash, killing its crew, the accident happened months later, and radiation had nothing to do with it).\nI could go on. Don’t get me started about that blue light from the exposed reactor shining high into the night sky in the first episode. Yes, nuclear reactors can produce a blue hue, from something called Cherenkov radiation,\nbut no, there’s no way Unit 4 would have looked like the “Tribute in Light” in Lower Manhattan on the anniversary of Sept. 11.\nIn the end, though, none of this really matters. For the mini-series gets a basic truth right — that the Chernobyl disaster was more about lies, deceit and a rotting political system than it was about bad engineering or abysmal management and training (or, for that matter, about whether nuclear power is inherently good or bad).\nImage\nWorkers on the show in protective gear. After the disaster, radioactive contamination spread across large swaths of Soviet and European territory.\nCredit...\nLiam Daniel\/HBO\n“Chernobyl” is grim only partly because of all the destruction and death. The need to constantly lie (or cope with the lies of higher-ups) weighs on its characters as heavily as all the lead that was dropped on the reactor.\nYes, this basic truth is simplified, too, especially in the final episode, which portrays the trial of three power plant officials.\nI don’t want to give away much about these scenes, though I will reveal that the geeky term “positive void coefficient” — one of the reactor’s design flaws — was uttered. (As a science writer, I was overjoyed.)\nThe scenes have a lot of tension, and are among the best in the whole mini-series. But they seem drawn more from American movie courtrooms than from Soviet jurisprudence.\nThe idea of someone speaking truth to power in this\ncourt seems about as far-fetched as anything else in the whole of “Chernobyl.”\nHow the show gets to its truth, however, is less important than that it gets there. Viewers may come away from “Chernobyl” realizing that, together, people and machines can do awful things — like create a nuclear catastrophe for the ages. If they also come away understanding that in this case, that outcome was more the fault of a government and its apparatchiks,\nso much the better.\nHenry Fountain\ncovers climate change, with a focus on the innovations that will be needed to overcome it. He is the author of “The Great Quake,” a book about the 1964 Alaskan earthquake.\nA version of this article appears in print on\nJune 3, 2019\n, Section C, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Getting a Nuclear Disaster Right. Mostly.\n.\nOrder Reprints\n|\nToday’s Paper\n|\nSubscribe\nRelated Content\nMore in Television\nNetflix\nEllie Smith for The New York Times\nEverett Collection\nTina Rowden\/HBO\nEditors’ Picks\nEmma McIntyre\/Getty Images\nAlexandre Juillet\/Chamonix-Mont Blanc\nTrending in The Times\nUnited States Army Reserve\nJanet Mac\nAmanda Shae Home Team Realty Group\nCourtesy of the Violin Museum\nDamon Winter\/The New York Times\nIzhar Khan\/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images\nKaoly Gutierrez for The New York Times\nThe Fashion Auctioneer\nAndy Clark\/Reuters\nPhoto Illustration by Mel Haasch; Grace Cary\/Getty Images\nAdvertisement\nSKIP ADVERTISEMENT","attrs_markdown":"[Skip to content](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2019\/06\/02\/arts\/television\/chernobyl-hbo.html#site-content)[Skip to site index](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2019\/06\/02\/arts\/television\/chernobyl-hbo.html#site-index)\n\nSearch & Section Navigation\n\nSection Navigation\n\nSearch\n\n[Television](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/arts\/television)\n\n[Log in](https:\/\/myaccount.nytimes.com\/auth\/login?response_type=cookie&client_id=vi&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2Fsubscription%2Fonboarding-offer%3FcampaignId%3D7JFJX%26EXIT_URI%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fwww.nytimes.com%252F2019%252F06%252F02%252Farts%252Ftelevision%252Fchernobyl-hbo.html&asset=masthead)\n\nWednesday, March 4, 2026\n\n[Today’s Paper](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/todayspaper)\n\n[What to Watch](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/spotlight\/what-to-watch)\n\n- [Oscar Nominees: Where to Stream](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/01\/22\/movies\/oscar-nominees-2026-how-to-watch.html)\n- [‘Scream 7’](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/02\/26\/movies\/scream-7-review-neve-campbell.html)\n- [‘Paul McCartney: Man on the Run’](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/02\/27\/movies\/paul-mccartney-man-on-the-run-review.html)\n- [‘Ghost Elephants’](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/02\/26\/movies\/ghost-elephants-review.html)\n- [‘DTF St. Louis’](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/02\/27\/arts\/television\/dtf-st-louis-review.html)\n\nAdvertisement\n\n[SKIP ADVERTISEMENT](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2019\/06\/02\/arts\/television\/chernobyl-hbo.html#after-top)\n\nSupported by\n\n[SKIP ADVERTISEMENT](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2019\/06\/02\/arts\/television\/chernobyl-hbo.html#after-sponsor)\n# Plenty of Fantasy in HBO’s ‘Chernobyl,’ but the Truth Is Real\nAhead of the series finale, a science writer who has toured the site of the 1986 nuclear disaster weighs in.\n\n- Share full article\n\n![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2019\/06\/02\/arts\/02chernobyl1\/merlin_155717706_add7fe8a-b85b-40ce-8ef9-96704777969d-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n\nA scene from the HBO mini-series “Chernobyl,” about the worst disaster in the history of nuclear power.Credit...HBO\n\nBy [Henry Fountain](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/by\/henry-fountain)\n\nJune 2, 2019\n\n[Leer en español](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/es\/2019\/06\/06\/chernobyl-hbo \"Read in Spanish\")\n\n*Henry Fountain is a science writer on the Climate desk of The New York Times. He toured the Chernobyl plant and the exclusion zone around it in 2014.*\n\nThe first thing to understand about the [HBO mini-series “Chernobyl,”](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2019\/05\/03\/arts\/television\/review-chernobyl-hbo.html) which concludes its five-part run on Monday, is that a lot of it is made up. But here’s the second, and more important, thing: It doesn’t really matter.\n\nThe explosion and fire at Chernobyl’s Unit 4 reactor on April 26, 1986, was an extraordinarily messy and grim event, a radioactive “dirty” bomb on a scale that no one — certainly not anyone in the Soviet Union — was prepared for. It remains the [worst disaster](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2019\/02\/06\/books\/review-midnight-chernobyl-adam-higginbotham.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FChernobyl%20Nuclear%20Accident%20\$1986\$&action=click&contentCollection=timestopics&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=2&pgtype=collection) in the history of nuclear power, killing more than 30 people initially (and more in the years that followed, though the numbers are much disputed) and spreading radioactive contamination across large swaths of Soviet and European territory.\n\nIn the immediate panicked aftermath, and in the months of crisis and confusion until the completion seven months later of the concrete-and-steel sarcophagus that entombed the reactor’s lethal remains, the heroes and villains numbered in the hundreds, and the supporting cast in the hundreds of thousands.\n\nThe producers of the mini-series don’t sanitize the disaster (sometimes the gore even goes a little too far: The radiation victims are often covered in blood for some reason). Instead, they simplify. They leave the grim alone, but the demands of Hollywood, and of production budgets, take a toll on the messy.\n\nImage\n\n![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2019\/06\/02\/arts\/02chernobyl4\/merlin_154186002_cf220efd-cf1b-45ad-b1d5-baa8e407059e-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n\nIn the show, a fire rages at the Unit 4 reactor. Credit...HBO\n\nThat’s not to say there aren’t many touches of verisimilitude. The rooftop scene in which conscripts have just seconds to toss radioactive debris to the ground is as otherworldly as it must have seemed to those who were there three decades ago. And the Unit 4 control room is faithfully re-created, from the control-rod dials on the walls to the white coats and caps worn by the operators. ([When I visited](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/interactive\/2014\/04\/27\/science\/chernobyl-capping-a-catastrophe.html) the adjacent Unit 3 control room five years ago, I had to wear the same odd outfit, which seemed more appropriate for a bakery than a nuclear power plant.)\n\nBut if you didn’t know much about Chernobyl you could be forgiven if, after watching, you thought the entire response and cleanup was run by two people, Valery Legasov and Boris Shcherbina, aided valiantly by a third, Ulana Khomyuk.\n\nYou could also be forgiven if you thought they were all real characters. Legasov and Shcherbina were real, though their roles were twisted and amplifiedto meet the script’s need to keep things moving. Khomyuk, on the other hand, was made out of whole cloth, and her actions strain credulity, from traveling to Chernobyl, uninvited, to investigate the accident to being in the presence of Mikhail Gorbachev at the Kremlin not much later.\n\n## Editors’ Picks\n[![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2023\/09\/21\/t-magazine\/21tmag-justinian-slide-JOO5-copy-copy\/21tmag-justinian-slide-JOO5-thumbLarge.jpg)Our Favorite Living Rooms](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/02\/28\/t-magazine\/best-living-room-design.html)\n\n[![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/05\/multimedia\/ST-CBK-AUCTION-01-zmpf\/ST-CBK-AUCTION-01-zmpf-thumbLarge.jpg)Carolyn Bessette Kennedy’s Wardrobe Finds a New Obsessive Audience](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/03\/02\/style\/carolyn-bessette-kennedy-auction-love-story.html)\n\n[![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/02\/well\/02WELL-GLP-1-MUSCLES-image\/02WELL-GLP-1-MUSCLES-image-thumbLarge.jpg)Why You Shouldn’t Panic About GLP-1 Muscle Loss](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/03\/02\/well\/glp-1-muscle-loss.html)\n\nAdvertisement\n\n[SKIP ADVERTISEMENT](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2019\/06\/02\/arts\/television\/chernobyl-hbo.html#after-pp_edpick)\n\nThe producers mention some folderol at the end, that Khomyuk was a composite character created to represent all of the scientists who helped investigate the disaster. Fine, I guess. But much of the rest of “Chernobyl” gets the simplistic Hollywood treatment, too.\n\nImage\n\n![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2019\/06\/03\/arts\/02chernobyl2\/merlin_154185969_f6d8d48d-8dae-4dd8-bc98-829288a41bf0-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n\nFrom left, Stellan Skarsgard as Boris Shcherbina, Jared Harris as Valery Legasov and Emily Watson as Ulana Khomyuk.Credit...Liam Daniel\/HBO\n\nImage\n\n![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2019\/06\/03\/arts\/02chernobyl3\/merlin_155663226_678fb6b9-a04d-44e0-99d3-247c072564aa-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n\nValery Legasov, head of the Soviet delegation at the Chernobyl Review Conference in Vienna, Aug. 29, 1986.Credit...Rudi Blaha\/Associated Press\n\nThere are the brave, doomed firefighters, ignorant of the radiation hazards they encountered (though nobody climbed up over the reactor debris, as portrayed in the series; they were working the roof to prevent fires from spreading to the undamaged Unit 3). The plucky, can-do miners, brought in to excavate under the reactor to stop the meltdown, stripping naked to get the job done (the series doesn’t say this, but their work ended up largely for naught). The no-nonsense helicopter pilots, risking radiation sickness to drop their loads of lead, boron and sand on the reactor (while one helicopter did crash, killing its crew, the accident happened months later, and radiation had nothing to do with it).\n\nI could go on. Don’t get me started about that blue light from the exposed reactor shining high into the night sky in the first episode. Yes, nuclear reactors can produce a blue hue, from something called Cherenkov radiation,but no, there’s no way Unit 4 would have looked like the “Tribute in Light” in Lower Manhattan on the anniversary of Sept. 11.\n\nIn the end, though, none of this really matters. For the mini-series gets a basic truth right — that the Chernobyl disaster was more about lies, deceit and a rotting political system than it was about bad engineering or abysmal management and training (or, for that matter, about whether nuclear power is inherently good or bad).\n\nImage\n\n![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2019\/06\/02\/arts\/02chernobyl5\/merlin_155717718_3f1d6869-b266-42f5-ab27-a04c4ab983eb-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n\nWorkers on the show in protective gear. After the disaster, radioactive contamination spread across large swaths of Soviet and European territory.Credit...Liam Daniel\/HBO\n\n“Chernobyl” is grim only partly because of all the destruction and death. The need to constantly lie (or cope with the lies of higher-ups) weighs on its characters as heavily as all the lead that was dropped on the reactor.\n\nYes, this basic truth is simplified, too, especially in the final episode, which portrays the trial of three power plant officials.\n\nI don’t want to give away much about these scenes, though I will reveal that the geeky term “positive void coefficient” — one of the reactor’s design flaws — was uttered. (As a science writer, I was overjoyed.)\n\nThe scenes have a lot of tension, and are among the best in the whole mini-series. But they seem drawn more from American movie courtrooms than from Soviet jurisprudence.The idea of someone speaking truth to power in thiscourt seems about as far-fetched as anything else in the whole of “Chernobyl.”\n\nHow the show gets to its truth, however, is less important than that it gets there. Viewers may come away from “Chernobyl” realizing that, together, people and machines can do awful things — like create a nuclear catastrophe for the ages. If they also come away understanding that in this case, that outcome was more the fault of a government and its apparatchiks,so much the better.\n\nRead More About Chernobyl\n\n[![]()Chernobyl: Capping a Catastrophe](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/interactive\/2014\/04\/27\/science\/chernobyl-capping-a-catastrophe.html)\n\n[![]()At Chernobyl, Hints of Nature’s Adaptation May 5, 2014](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2014\/05\/06\/science\/nature-adapts-to-chernobyl.html)\n\n[![]()Review: ‘Chernobyl,’ the Disaster Movie May 3, 2019](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2019\/05\/03\/arts\/television\/review-chernobyl-hbo.html)\n\n[Henry Fountain](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/by\/henry-fountain) covers climate change, with a focus on the innovations that will be needed to overcome it. He is the author of “The Great Quake,” a book about the 1964 Alaskan earthquake.\n\nA version of this article appears in print on June 3, 2019, Section C, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Getting a Nuclear Disaster Right. Mostly.. [Order Reprints](https:\/\/nytimes.wrightsmedia.com\/) \\| [Today’s Paper](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/todayspaper) \\| [Subscribe](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/subscriptions\/Multiproduct\/lp8HYKU.html?campaignId=48JQY)\n\nSee more on: [HBO, Inc.](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/topic\/company\/home-box-office-inc)\n\n- Share full article\n\n***\n## Explore More in TV and Movies\n### Not sure what to watch next? We can help.\n***\n- **Getting Movie Titles Wrong:** Staffers at Film at Lincoln Center keep a list of the incorrect movie titles they’ve heard from patrons. [That list is very, very long](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/03\/02\/movies\/wrong-movie-titles.html).\n- **The Price of Artistic Freedom:** Our critic notes that onscreen and behind the scenes, ”Sinners” is about the [pursuit of liberation](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/03\/02\/movies\/sinners-ryan-coogler-freedom.html), not just for its characters, but also for filmmaking itself.\n- **‘Hamnet’:** The director [Chloé Zhao narrates a sequence](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/03\/04\/movies\/hamnet-clip.html) from her film featuring Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal. The movie is nominated for eight Oscars, including best picture.\n- **‘Young Sherlock’:** The new series, streaming on Prime Video, tells the story of the famous detective’s youth with the [trademark swagger of the producer Guy Ritchie](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/03\/03\/arts\/television\/young-sherlock.html).\n- **Bringing Scotland to the World:** “Outlander” is wrapping up, but its legacy will live on in a [tourism boom for the country](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/03\/04\/arts\/television\/outlander-scotland.html) and a blossoming local TV industry.\n- **Streaming Guides:** If you are overwhelmed by the endless options, don’t despair — we put together the [best offerings](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/article\/best-movies-netflix.html) [on Netflix](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/03\/03\/arts\/television\/netflix-peaky-blinders-rachel-weisz.html), [Max](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/article\/best-movies-hbo-max.html), [Disney+](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/article\/best-tv-shows-movies-disney-plus.html), [Amazon Prime](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/article\/best-movies-amazon-prime.html) and [Hulu](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/article\/best-movies-shows-hulu.html) to make choosing your next binge a little easier.\n\n## Related Content\n### [More in Television](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/arts\/television)\n- [The Best Movies and TV Shows Coming to Netflix in March](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/03\/03\/arts\/television\/new-netflix-march-2026.html)\n  \n  ![Cillian Murphy in the sequel movie “Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man,” which jumps ahead to 1940.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/03\/arts\/03cul-netflix-new\/03cul-netflix-new-square640.png?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n  \n  Netflix\n- [‘Outlander’ Brought the World to Scotland, and Scotland to the World](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/03\/04\/arts\/television\/outlander-scotland.html)\n  \n  ![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/04\/multimedia\/04cul-outlander-promo\/04cul-outlander-jvgp-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n  \n  Ellie Smith for The New York Times\n- [Lauren Chapin, Youngest Child on ‘Father Knows Best,’ Dies at 80](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/02\/25\/arts\/television\/lauren-chapin-dead.html)\n  \n  ![Ms. Chapin in an undated image for “Father Knows Best.” As Kathy, nicknamed Kitten, she was a bundle of grade-school energy, always observing, frequently making fun and sometimes feeling terribly misunderstood.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/27\/multimedia\/25chapin-lauren-lhcm-print2\/25chapin-lauren-lhcm-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n  \n  Everett Collection\n- [‘DTF St. Louis’ Review: Sex, Death and Jamba Juice](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/02\/27\/arts\/television\/dtf-st-louis-review.html)\n  \n  ![Jason Bateman, left, and David Harbour play unsatisfied suburbanites in “DTF St. Louis.”](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/28\/arts\/27dtf-1\/27dtf-1-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n  \n  Tina Rowden\/HBO\n\n### Editors’ Picks\n- [Are Zendaya and Tom Holland Married?](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/03\/02\/style\/zendaya-tom-holland-married.html)\n  \n  ![Husband and wife?](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/02\/multimedia\/02ST-ZENDAYA-WEDDING-htcf\/02ST-ZENDAYA-WEDDING-htcf-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n  \n  Emma McIntyre\/Getty Images\n- [A Crisis in the Alps: Airbnb, Climate Change and Americans](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/03\/02\/travel\/french-alps-problems-overdevelopment-climate-change.html)\n  \n  ![A view over the Chamonix valley from the Balme-Vallorcine ski area. ](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/25\/multimedia\/25-alps-skiing-development-bvwc\/25-alps-skiing-development-bvwc-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n  \n  Alexandre Juillet\/Chamonix-Mont Blanc\n\n### Trending in The Times\n- [Family Mourns Iowa Soldier Killed in Kuwait](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/video\/world\/middleeast\/100000010752935\/declan-coady-soldier-killed-iran-war.html)\n  \n  ![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/03\/us\/03iran-live-troops-profile--04\/03iran-live-troops-profile--04-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  United States Army Reserve\n- [Opinion: The Reason Gen Z Isn’t Dating](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/03\/03\/opinion\/gen-z-dating-clavicular.html)\n  \n  ![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/03\/opinion\/03emba\/03emba-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Janet Mac\n- [\\$550,000 Homes in Kentucky, Florida and Maryland](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/03\/04\/realestate\/florida-maryland-kentucky-home-sales.html)\n  \n  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Liutarie Collections of the Municipality of Cremona, on display at the Violin Museum](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/04\/multimedia\/04HS-tb-violin-01-vwgh\/04HS-tb-violin-01-vwgh-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Courtesy of the Violin Museum\n- [Opinion: ‘I See Him as a Pretty Thoroughgoing Illiberal at This Stage’](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/03\/03\/opinion\/jd-vance-has-his-reasons.html)\n  \n  ![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/04\/03\/multimedia\/03-Edsall-bphg\/03-Edsall-bphg-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Damon Winter\/The New York Times\n- [Thousands Leave Middle East by Land and Air](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/video\/world\/middleeast\/100000010752563\/thousands-evecuate-middle-east-iran-war.html)\n  \n  ![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/04\/multimedia\/-04vid-evacuations--vfph\/-04vid-evacuations--vfph-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Izhar Khan\/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images\n- [Parents Tried to Shield Their Children From Vaccines. Instead They Got Measles.](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/03\/03\/us\/politics\/south-carolina-measles-outbreak-vaccines.html)\n  \n  ![Uptake of the vaccine has been slow, like at this public health fair at The University of South Carolina School of Medicine in Greenville, S.C.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/03\/multimedia\/03nat-measles-southcarolina-01-kcqv\/03nat-measles-southcarolina-01-kcqv-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Kaoly Gutierrez for The New York Times\n- [Carolyn Bessette Kennedy’s Wardrobe Finds a New Obsessive Audience](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/03\/02\/style\/carolyn-bessette-kennedy-auction-love-story.html)\n  \n  ![Several styles worn by Ms. Bessette Kennedy are on sale in an auction timed to meet renewed interest in her style.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/05\/multimedia\/ST-CBK-AUCTION-01-zmpf\/ST-CBK-AUCTION-01-zmpf-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  The Fashion Auctioneer\n- [British Columbia Will Change Clocks on Sunday for the Last Time](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/03\/03\/world\/canada\/daylight-savings-bc-time.html)\n  \n  ![The Gastown Steam Clock marking the noon hour in Vancouver, British Columbia.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/03\/multimedia\/03xp-bc-dst-btcp\/03xp-bc-dst-btcp-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Andy Clark\/Reuters\n- [Reporters Seek Comment. What Happens Next May Surprise You.](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/03\/02\/insider\/journalism-reporting-seeking-comment.html)\n  \n  ![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/21\/pageoneplus\/21insider-comment\/21insider-comment-square640.png?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Photo Illustration by Mel Haasch; Grace Cary\/Getty Images\n\nAdvertisement\n\n[SKIP ADVERTISEMENT](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2019\/06\/02\/arts\/television\/chernobyl-hbo.html#after-bottom)\n\n## Site Index\n[Go to Home Page »](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/)\n\nNews\n\n- [Home Page](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/)\n- [U.S.](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/us)\n- [World](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/world)\n- [Politics](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/politics)\n- [New York](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/nyregion)\n- [Education](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/education)\n- [Sports](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/sports)\n- 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Navigation\n- [© 2026 The New York Times Company](https:\/\/help.nytimes.com\/hc\/en-us\/articles\/115014792127-Copyright-Notice)\n\n- [NYTCo](https:\/\/www.nytco.com\/)\n- [Contact Us](https:\/\/help.nytimes.com\/hc\/en-us\/articles\/115015385887-Contact-The-New-York-Times)\n- [Accessibility](https:\/\/help.nytimes.com\/hc\/en-us\/articles\/115015727108-Accessibility)\n- [Work with us](https:\/\/www.nytco.com\/careers\/)\n- [Advertise](https:\/\/advertising.nytimes.com\/)\n- [T Brand Studio](https:\/\/advertising.nytimes.com\/custom-content\/)\n- [Privacy Policy](https:\/\/help.nytimes.com\/hc\/en-us\/articles\/10940941449492-The-New-York-Times-Company-Privacy-Policy)\n- [Cookie Policy](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/privacy\/cookie-policy)\n- [Terms of Service](https:\/\/help.nytimes.com\/hc\/en-us\/articles\/115014893428-Terms-of-Service)\n- [Terms of Sale](https:\/\/help.nytimes.com\/hc\/en-us\/articles\/115014893968-Terms-of-Sale)\n- [Site Map](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/sitemap\/)\n- [Canada](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/ca\/)\n- [International](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/international\/)\n- [Help](https:\/\/help.nytimes.com\/hc\/en-us)\n- [Subscriptions](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/subscription?campaignId=37WXW)","attrs_readable_markdown":"Advertisement\n\n[SKIP ADVERTISEMENT](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2019\/06\/02\/arts\/television\/chernobyl-hbo.html#after-top)\n\nAhead of the series finale, a science writer who has toured the site of the 1986 nuclear disaster weighs in.\n\n![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2019\/06\/02\/arts\/02chernobyl1\/merlin_155717706_add7fe8a-b85b-40ce-8ef9-96704777969d-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n\nA scene from the HBO mini-series “Chernobyl,” about the worst disaster in the history of nuclear power.Credit...HBO\n\nJune 2, 2019\n\n*Henry Fountain is a science writer on the Climate desk of The New York Times. He toured the Chernobyl plant and the exclusion zone around it in 2014.*\n\nThe first thing to understand about the [HBO mini-series “Chernobyl,”](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2019\/05\/03\/arts\/television\/review-chernobyl-hbo.html) which concludes its five-part run on Monday, is that a lot of it is made up. But here’s the second, and more important, thing: It doesn’t really matter.\n\nThe explosion and fire at Chernobyl’s Unit 4 reactor on April 26, 1986, was an extraordinarily messy and grim event, a radioactive “dirty” bomb on a scale that no one — certainly not anyone in the Soviet Union — was prepared for. It remains the [worst disaster](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2019\/02\/06\/books\/review-midnight-chernobyl-adam-higginbotham.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FChernobyl%20Nuclear%20Accident%20\$1986\$&action=click&contentCollection=timestopics&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=2&pgtype=collection) in the history of nuclear power, killing more than 30 people initially (and more in the years that followed, though the numbers are much disputed) and spreading radioactive contamination across large swaths of Soviet and European territory.\n\nIn the immediate panicked aftermath, and in the months of crisis and confusion until the completion seven months later of the concrete-and-steel sarcophagus that entombed the reactor’s lethal remains, the heroes and villains numbered in the hundreds, and the supporting cast in the hundreds of thousands.\n\nThe producers of the mini-series don’t sanitize the disaster (sometimes the gore even goes a little too far: The radiation victims are often covered in blood for some reason). Instead, they simplify. They leave the grim alone, but the demands of Hollywood, and of production budgets, take a toll on the messy.\n\nImage\n\n![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2019\/06\/02\/arts\/02chernobyl4\/merlin_154186002_cf220efd-cf1b-45ad-b1d5-baa8e407059e-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n\nIn the show, a fire rages at the Unit 4 reactor. Credit...HBO\n\nThat’s not to say there aren’t many touches of verisimilitude. The rooftop scene in which conscripts have just seconds to toss radioactive debris to the ground is as otherworldly as it must have seemed to those who were there three decades ago. And the Unit 4 control room is faithfully re-created, from the control-rod dials on the walls to the white coats and caps worn by the operators. ([When I visited](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/interactive\/2014\/04\/27\/science\/chernobyl-capping-a-catastrophe.html) the adjacent Unit 3 control room five years ago, I had to wear the same odd outfit, which seemed more appropriate for a bakery than a nuclear power plant.)\n\nBut if you didn’t know much about Chernobyl you could be forgiven if, after watching, you thought the entire response and cleanup was run by two people, Valery Legasov and Boris Shcherbina, aided valiantly by a third, Ulana Khomyuk.\n\nYou could also be forgiven if you thought they were all real characters. Legasov and Shcherbina were real, though their roles were twisted and amplifiedto meet the script’s need to keep things moving. Khomyuk, on the other hand, was made out of whole cloth, and her actions strain credulity, from traveling to Chernobyl, uninvited, to investigate the accident to being in the presence of Mikhail Gorbachev at the Kremlin not much later.\n\nThe producers mention some folderol at the end, that Khomyuk was a composite character created to represent all of the scientists who helped investigate the disaster. Fine, I guess. But much of the rest of “Chernobyl” gets the simplistic Hollywood treatment, too.\n\nImage\n\n![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2019\/06\/03\/arts\/02chernobyl2\/merlin_154185969_f6d8d48d-8dae-4dd8-bc98-829288a41bf0-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n\nFrom left, Stellan Skarsgard as Boris Shcherbina, Jared Harris as Valery Legasov and Emily Watson as Ulana Khomyuk.Credit...Liam Daniel\/HBO\n\nImage\n\n![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2019\/06\/03\/arts\/02chernobyl3\/merlin_155663226_678fb6b9-a04d-44e0-99d3-247c072564aa-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n\nValery Legasov, head of the Soviet delegation at the Chernobyl Review Conference in Vienna, Aug. 29, 1986.Credit...Rudi Blaha\/Associated Press\n\nThere are the brave, doomed firefighters, ignorant of the radiation hazards they encountered (though nobody climbed up over the reactor debris, as portrayed in the series; they were working the roof to prevent fires from spreading to the undamaged Unit 3). The plucky, can-do miners, brought in to excavate under the reactor to stop the meltdown, stripping naked to get the job done (the series doesn’t say this, but their work ended up largely for naught). The no-nonsense helicopter pilots, risking radiation sickness to drop their loads of lead, boron and sand on the reactor (while one helicopter did crash, killing its crew, the accident happened months later, and radiation had nothing to do with it).\n\nI could go on. Don’t get me started about that blue light from the exposed reactor shining high into the night sky in the first episode. Yes, nuclear reactors can produce a blue hue, from something called Cherenkov radiation,but no, there’s no way Unit 4 would have looked like the “Tribute in Light” in Lower Manhattan on the anniversary of Sept. 11.\n\nIn the end, though, none of this really matters. For the mini-series gets a basic truth right — that the Chernobyl disaster was more about lies, deceit and a rotting political system than it was about bad engineering or abysmal management and training (or, for that matter, about whether nuclear power is inherently good or bad).\n\nImage\n\n![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2019\/06\/02\/arts\/02chernobyl5\/merlin_155717718_3f1d6869-b266-42f5-ab27-a04c4ab983eb-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n\nWorkers on the show in protective gear. After the disaster, radioactive contamination spread across large swaths of Soviet and European territory.Credit...Liam Daniel\/HBO\n\n“Chernobyl” is grim only partly because of all the destruction and death. The need to constantly lie (or cope with the lies of higher-ups) weighs on its characters as heavily as all the lead that was dropped on the reactor.\n\nYes, this basic truth is simplified, too, especially in the final episode, which portrays the trial of three power plant officials.\n\nI don’t want to give away much about these scenes, though I will reveal that the geeky term “positive void coefficient” — one of the reactor’s design flaws — was uttered. (As a science writer, I was overjoyed.)\n\nThe scenes have a lot of tension, and are among the best in the whole mini-series. But they seem drawn more from American movie courtrooms than from Soviet jurisprudence.The idea of someone speaking truth to power in thiscourt seems about as far-fetched as anything else in the whole of “Chernobyl.”\n\nHow the show gets to its truth, however, is less important than that it gets there. Viewers may come away from “Chernobyl” realizing that, together, people and machines can do awful things — like create a nuclear catastrophe for the ages. If they also come away understanding that in this case, that outcome was more the fault of a government and its apparatchiks,so much the better.\n\n[Henry Fountain](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/by\/henry-fountain) covers climate change, with a focus on the innovations that will be needed to overcome it. He is the author of “The Great Quake,” a book about the 1964 Alaskan earthquake.\n\nA version of this article appears in print on June 3, 2019, Section C, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Getting a Nuclear Disaster Right. Mostly.. [Order Reprints](https:\/\/nytimes.wrightsmedia.com\/) \\| [Today’s Paper](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/todayspaper) \\| [Subscribe](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/subscriptions\/Multiproduct\/lp8HYKU.html?campaignId=48JQY)\n\n## Related Content\n[More in Television](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/arts\/television)\n\n- ![Cillian Murphy in the sequel movie “Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man,” which jumps ahead to 1940.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/03\/arts\/03cul-netflix-new\/03cul-netflix-new-square640.png?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n  \n  Netflix\n- ![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/04\/multimedia\/04cul-outlander-promo\/04cul-outlander-jvgp-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n  \n  Ellie Smith for The New York Times\n- ![Ms. Chapin in an undated image for “Father Knows Best.” As Kathy, nicknamed Kitten, she was a bundle of grade-school energy, always observing, frequently making fun and sometimes feeling terribly misunderstood.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/27\/multimedia\/25chapin-lauren-lhcm-print2\/25chapin-lauren-lhcm-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n  \n  Everett Collection\n- ![Jason Bateman, left, and David Harbour play unsatisfied suburbanites in “DTF St. Louis.”](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/28\/arts\/27dtf-1\/27dtf-1-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n  \n  Tina Rowden\/HBO\n\nEditors’ Picks\n\n- ![Husband and wife?](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/02\/multimedia\/02ST-ZENDAYA-WEDDING-htcf\/02ST-ZENDAYA-WEDDING-htcf-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n  \n  Emma McIntyre\/Getty Images\n- ![A view over the Chamonix valley from the Balme-Vallorcine ski area. ](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/25\/multimedia\/25-alps-skiing-development-bvwc\/25-alps-skiing-development-bvwc-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n  \n  Alexandre Juillet\/Chamonix-Mont Blanc\n\nTrending in The Times\n\n- ![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/03\/us\/03iran-live-troops-profile--04\/03iran-live-troops-profile--04-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  United States Army Reserve\n- ![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/03\/opinion\/03emba\/03emba-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Janet Mac\n- ![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/04\/realestate\/04re-wyg-Louisville\/04re-wyg-Louisville-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Amanda Shae Home Team Realty Group\n- ![Antonio Stradivari (1644c.–1737) – Cremonese violin, 1715. Liutarie Collections of the Municipality of Cremona, on display at the Violin Museum](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/04\/multimedia\/04HS-tb-violin-01-vwgh\/04HS-tb-violin-01-vwgh-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Courtesy of the Violin Museum\n- ![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/04\/03\/multimedia\/03-Edsall-bphg\/03-Edsall-bphg-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Damon Winter\/The New York Times\n- ![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/04\/multimedia\/-04vid-evacuations--vfph\/-04vid-evacuations--vfph-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Izhar Khan\/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images\n- ![Uptake of the vaccine has been slow, like at this public health fair at The University of South Carolina School of Medicine in Greenville, S.C.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/03\/multimedia\/03nat-measles-southcarolina-01-kcqv\/03nat-measles-southcarolina-01-kcqv-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Kaoly Gutierrez for The New York Times\n- ![Several styles worn by Ms. Bessette Kennedy are on sale in an auction timed to meet renewed interest in her style.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/05\/multimedia\/ST-CBK-AUCTION-01-zmpf\/ST-CBK-AUCTION-01-zmpf-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  The Fashion Auctioneer\n- ![The Gastown Steam Clock marking the noon hour in Vancouver, British Columbia.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/03\/multimedia\/03xp-bc-dst-btcp\/03xp-bc-dst-btcp-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Andy Clark\/Reuters\n- ![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/21\/pageoneplus\/21insider-comment\/21insider-comment-square640.png?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Photo Illustration by Mel Haasch; Grace Cary\/Getty Images\n\nAdvertisement\n\n[SKIP ADVERTISEMENT](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2019\/06\/02\/arts\/television\/chernobyl-hbo.html#after-bottom)","meta_canonical":null}

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Boilerpipe Text	Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Ahead of the series finale, a science writer who has toured the site of the 1986 nuclear disaster weighs in. A scene from the HBO mini-series “Chernobyl,” about the worst disaster in the history of nuclear power. Credit... HBO June 2, 2019 Henry Fountain is a science writer on the Climate desk of The New York Times. He toured the Chernobyl plant and the exclusion zone around it in 2014. The first thing to understand about the HBO mini-series “Chernobyl,” which concludes its five-part run on Monday, is that a lot of it is made up. But here’s the second, and more important, thing: It doesn’t really matter. The explosion and fire at Chernobyl’s Unit 4 reactor on April 26, 1986, was an extraordinarily messy and grim event, a radioactive “dirty” bomb on a scale that no one — certainly not anyone in the Soviet Union — was prepared for. It remains the worst disaster in the history of nuclear power, killing more than 30 people initially (and more in the years that followed, though the numbers are much disputed) and spreading radioactive contamination across large swaths of Soviet and European territory. In the immediate panicked aftermath, and in the months of crisis and confusion until the completion seven months later of the concrete-and-steel sarcophagus that entombed the reactor’s lethal remains, the heroes and villains numbered in the hundreds, and the supporting cast in the hundreds of thousands. The producers of the mini-series don’t sanitize the disaster (sometimes the gore even goes a little too far: The radiation victims are often covered in blood for some reason). Instead, they simplify. They leave the grim alone, but the demands of Hollywood, and of production budgets, take a toll on the messy. Image In the show, a fire rages at the Unit 4 reactor. Credit... HBO That’s not to say there aren’t many touches of verisimilitude. The rooftop scene in which conscripts have just seconds to toss radioactive debris to the ground is as otherworldly as it must have seemed to those who were there three decades ago. And the Unit 4 control room is faithfully re-created, from the control-rod dials on the walls to the white coats and caps worn by the operators. ( When I visited the adjacent Unit 3 control room five years ago, I had to wear the same odd outfit, which seemed more appropriate for a bakery than a nuclear power plant.) But if you didn’t know much about Chernobyl you could be forgiven if, after watching, you thought the entire response and cleanup was run by two people, Valery Legasov and Boris Shcherbina, aided valiantly by a third, Ulana Khomyuk. You could also be forgiven if you thought they were all real characters. Legasov and Shcherbina were real, though their roles were twisted and amplified to meet the script’s need to keep things moving. Khomyuk, on the other hand, was made out of whole cloth, and her actions strain credulity, from traveling to Chernobyl, uninvited, to investigate the accident to being in the presence of Mikhail Gorbachev at the Kremlin not much later. The producers mention some folderol at the end, that Khomyuk was a composite character created to represent all of the scientists who helped investigate the disaster. Fine, I guess. But much of the rest of “Chernobyl” gets the simplistic Hollywood treatment, too. Image From left, Stellan Skarsgard as Boris Shcherbina, Jared Harris as Valery Legasov and Emily Watson as Ulana Khomyuk. Credit... Liam Daniel/HBO Image Valery Legasov, head of the Soviet delegation at the Chernobyl Review Conference in Vienna, Aug. 29, 1986. Credit... Rudi Blaha/Associated Press There are the brave, doomed firefighters, ignorant of the radiation hazards they encountered (though nobody climbed up over the reactor debris, as portrayed in the series; they were working the roof to prevent fires from spreading to the undamaged Unit 3). The plucky, can-do miners, brought in to excavate under the reactor to stop the meltdown, stripping naked to get the job done (the series doesn’t say this, but their work ended up largely for naught). The no-nonsense helicopter pilots, risking radiation sickness to drop their loads of lead, boron and sand on the reactor (while one helicopter did crash, killing its crew, the accident happened months later, and radiation had nothing to do with it). I could go on. Don’t get me started about that blue light from the exposed reactor shining high into the night sky in the first episode. Yes, nuclear reactors can produce a blue hue, from something called Cherenkov radiation, but no, there’s no way Unit 4 would have looked like the “Tribute in Light” in Lower Manhattan on the anniversary of Sept. 11. In the end, though, none of this really matters. For the mini-series gets a basic truth right — that the Chernobyl disaster was more about lies, deceit and a rotting political system than it was about bad engineering or abysmal management and training (or, for that matter, about whether nuclear power is inherently good or bad). Image Workers on the show in protective gear. After the disaster, radioactive contamination spread across large swaths of Soviet and European territory. Credit... Liam Daniel/HBO “Chernobyl” is grim only partly because of all the destruction and death. The need to constantly lie (or cope with the lies of higher-ups) weighs on its characters as heavily as all the lead that was dropped on the reactor. Yes, this basic truth is simplified, too, especially in the final episode, which portrays the trial of three power plant officials. I don’t want to give away much about these scenes, though I will reveal that the geeky term “positive void coefficient” — one of the reactor’s design flaws — was uttered. (As a science writer, I was overjoyed.) The scenes have a lot of tension, and are among the best in the whole mini-series. But they seem drawn more from American movie courtrooms than from Soviet jurisprudence. The idea of someone speaking truth to power in this court seems about as far-fetched as anything else in the whole of “Chernobyl.” How the show gets to its truth, however, is less important than that it gets there. Viewers may come away from “Chernobyl” realizing that, together, people and machines can do awful things — like create a nuclear catastrophe for the ages. If they also come away understanding that in this case, that outcome was more the fault of a government and its apparatchiks, so much the better. Henry Fountain covers climate change, with a focus on the innovations that will be needed to overcome it. He is the author of “The Great Quake,” a book about the 1964 Alaskan earthquake. A version of this article appears in print on June 3, 2019 , Section C, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Getting a Nuclear Disaster Right. Mostly. . Order Reprints \| Today’s Paper \| Subscribe Related Content More in Television Netflix Ellie Smith for The New York Times Everett Collection Tina Rowden/HBO Editors’ Picks Emma McIntyre/Getty Images Alexandre Juillet/Chamonix-Mont Blanc Trending in The Times United States Army Reserve Janet Mac Amanda Shae Home Team Realty Group Courtesy of the Violin Museum Damon Winter/The New York Times Izhar Khan/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Kaoly Gutierrez for The New York Times The Fashion Auctioneer Andy Clark/Reuters Photo Illustration by Mel Haasch; Grace Cary/Getty Images Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT
Markdown	[Skip to content](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/02/arts/television/chernobyl-hbo.html#site-content)[Skip to site index](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/02/arts/television/chernobyl-hbo.html#site-index) Search & Section Navigation Section Navigation Search [Television](https://www.nytimes.com/section/arts/television) [Log in](https://myaccount.nytimes.com/auth/login?response_type=cookie&client_id=vi&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2Fsubscription%2Fonboarding-offer%3FcampaignId%3D7JFJX%26EXIT_URI%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fwww.nytimes.com%252F2019%252F06%252F02%252Farts%252Ftelevision%252Fchernobyl-hbo.html&asset=masthead) Wednesday, March 4, 2026 [Today’s Paper](https://www.nytimes.com/section/todayspaper) [What to Watch](https://www.nytimes.com/spotlight/what-to-watch) - [Oscar Nominees: Where to Stream](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/22/movies/oscar-nominees-2026-how-to-watch.html) - [‘Scream 7’](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/26/movies/scream-7-review-neve-campbell.html) - [‘Paul McCartney: Man on the Run’](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/27/movies/paul-mccartney-man-on-the-run-review.html) - [‘Ghost Elephants’](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/26/movies/ghost-elephants-review.html) - [‘DTF St. Louis’](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/27/arts/television/dtf-st-louis-review.html) Advertisement [SKIP ADVERTISEMENT](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/02/arts/television/chernobyl-hbo.html#after-top) Supported by [SKIP ADVERTISEMENT](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/02/arts/television/chernobyl-hbo.html#after-sponsor) # Plenty of Fantasy in HBO’s ‘Chernobyl,’ but the Truth Is Real Ahead of the series finale, a science writer who has toured the site of the 1986 nuclear disaster weighs in. - Share full article ![](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2019/06/02/arts/02chernobyl1/merlin_155717706_add7fe8a-b85b-40ce-8ef9-96704777969d-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale) A scene from the HBO mini-series “Chernobyl,” about the worst disaster in the history of nuclear power.Credit...HBO By [Henry Fountain](https://www.nytimes.com/by/henry-fountain) June 2, 2019 [Leer en español](https://www.nytimes.com/es/2019/06/06/chernobyl-hbo "Read in Spanish") Henry Fountain is a science writer on the Climate desk of The New York Times. He toured the Chernobyl plant and the exclusion zone around it in 2014. The first thing to understand about the [HBO mini-series “Chernobyl,”](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/03/arts/television/review-chernobyl-hbo.html) which concludes its five-part run on Monday, is that a lot of it is made up. But here’s the second, and more important, thing: It doesn’t really matter. The explosion and fire at Chernobyl’s Unit 4 reactor on April 26, 1986, was an extraordinarily messy and grim event, a radioactive “dirty” bomb on a scale that no one — certainly not anyone in the Soviet Union — was prepared for. It remains the [worst disaster](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/06/books/review-midnight-chernobyl-adam-higginbotham.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FChernobyl%20Nuclear%20Accident%20$1986$&action=click&contentCollection=timestopics&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=2&pgtype=collection) in the history of nuclear power, killing more than 30 people initially (and more in the years that followed, though the numbers are much disputed) and spreading radioactive contamination across large swaths of Soviet and European territory. In the immediate panicked aftermath, and in the months of crisis and confusion until the completion seven months later of the concrete-and-steel sarcophagus that entombed the reactor’s lethal remains, the heroes and villains numbered in the hundreds, and the supporting cast in the hundreds of thousands. The producers of the mini-series don’t sanitize the disaster (sometimes the gore even goes a little too far: The radiation victims are often covered in blood for some reason). Instead, they simplify. They leave the grim alone, but the demands of Hollywood, and of production budgets, take a toll on the messy. Image ![](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2019/06/02/arts/02chernobyl4/merlin_154186002_cf220efd-cf1b-45ad-b1d5-baa8e407059e-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale) In the show, a fire rages at the Unit 4 reactor. Credit...HBO That’s not to say there aren’t many touches of verisimilitude. The rooftop scene in which conscripts have just seconds to toss radioactive debris to the ground is as otherworldly as it must have seemed to those who were there three decades ago. And the Unit 4 control room is faithfully re-created, from the control-rod dials on the walls to the white coats and caps worn by the operators. ([When I visited](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/04/27/science/chernobyl-capping-a-catastrophe.html) the adjacent Unit 3 control room five years ago, I had to wear the same odd outfit, which seemed more appropriate for a bakery than a nuclear power plant.) But if you didn’t know much about Chernobyl you could be forgiven if, after watching, you thought the entire response and cleanup was run by two people, Valery Legasov and Boris Shcherbina, aided valiantly by a third, Ulana Khomyuk. You could also be forgiven if you thought they were all real characters. Legasov and Shcherbina were real, though their roles were twisted and amplifiedto meet the script’s need to keep things moving. Khomyuk, on the other hand, was made out of whole cloth, and her actions strain credulity, from traveling to Chernobyl, uninvited, to investigate the accident to being in the presence of Mikhail Gorbachev at the Kremlin not much later. ## Editors’ Picks [![](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2023/09/21/t-magazine/21tmag-justinian-slide-JOO5-copy-copy/21tmag-justinian-slide-JOO5-thumbLarge.jpg)Our Favorite Living Rooms](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/28/t-magazine/best-living-room-design.html) [![](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2026/03/05/multimedia/ST-CBK-AUCTION-01-zmpf/ST-CBK-AUCTION-01-zmpf-thumbLarge.jpg)Carolyn Bessette Kennedy’s Wardrobe Finds a New Obsessive Audience](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/02/style/carolyn-bessette-kennedy-auction-love-story.html) [![](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2026/03/02/well/02WELL-GLP-1-MUSCLES-image/02WELL-GLP-1-MUSCLES-image-thumbLarge.jpg)Why You Shouldn’t Panic About GLP-1 Muscle Loss](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/02/well/glp-1-muscle-loss.html) Advertisement [SKIP ADVERTISEMENT](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/02/arts/television/chernobyl-hbo.html#after-pp_edpick) The producers mention some folderol at the end, that Khomyuk was a composite character created to represent all of the scientists who helped investigate the disaster. Fine, I guess. But much of the rest of “Chernobyl” gets the simplistic Hollywood treatment, too. Image ![](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2019/06/03/arts/02chernobyl2/merlin_154185969_f6d8d48d-8dae-4dd8-bc98-829288a41bf0-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale) From left, Stellan Skarsgard as Boris Shcherbina, Jared Harris as Valery Legasov and Emily Watson as Ulana Khomyuk.Credit...Liam Daniel/HBO Image ![](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2019/06/03/arts/02chernobyl3/merlin_155663226_678fb6b9-a04d-44e0-99d3-247c072564aa-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale) Valery Legasov, head of the Soviet delegation at the Chernobyl Review Conference in Vienna, Aug. 29, 1986.Credit...Rudi Blaha/Associated Press There are the brave, doomed firefighters, ignorant of the radiation hazards they encountered (though nobody climbed up over the reactor debris, as portrayed in the series; they were working the roof to prevent fires from spreading to the undamaged Unit 3). The plucky, can-do miners, brought in to excavate under the reactor to stop the meltdown, stripping naked to get the job done (the series doesn’t say this, but their work ended up largely for naught). The no-nonsense helicopter pilots, risking radiation sickness to drop their loads of lead, boron and sand on the reactor (while one helicopter did crash, killing its crew, the accident happened months later, and radiation had nothing to do with it). I could go on. Don’t get me started about that blue light from the exposed reactor shining high into the night sky in the first episode. Yes, nuclear reactors can produce a blue hue, from something called Cherenkov radiation,but no, there’s no way Unit 4 would have looked like the “Tribute in Light” in Lower Manhattan on the anniversary of Sept. 11. In the end, though, none of this really matters. For the mini-series gets a basic truth right — that the Chernobyl disaster was more about lies, deceit and a rotting political system than it was about bad engineering or abysmal management and training (or, for that matter, about whether nuclear power is inherently good or bad). Image ![](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2019/06/02/arts/02chernobyl5/merlin_155717718_3f1d6869-b266-42f5-ab27-a04c4ab983eb-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale) Workers on the show in protective gear. After the disaster, radioactive contamination spread across large swaths of Soviet and European territory.Credit...Liam Daniel/HBO “Chernobyl” is grim only partly because of all the destruction and death. The need to constantly lie (or cope with the lies of higher-ups) weighs on its characters as heavily as all the lead that was dropped on the reactor. Yes, this basic truth is simplified, too, especially in the final episode, which portrays the trial of three power plant officials. I don’t want to give away much about these scenes, though I will reveal that the geeky term “positive void coefficient” — one of the reactor’s design flaws — was uttered. (As a science writer, I was overjoyed.) The scenes have a lot of tension, and are among the best in the whole mini-series. But they seem drawn more from American movie courtrooms than from Soviet jurisprudence.The idea of someone speaking truth to power in thiscourt seems about as far-fetched as anything else in the whole of “Chernobyl.” How the show gets to its truth, however, is less important than that it gets there. Viewers may come away from “Chernobyl” realizing that, together, people and machines can do awful things — like create a nuclear catastrophe for the ages. If they also come away understanding that in this case, that outcome was more the fault of a government and its apparatchiks,so much the better. Read More About Chernobyl [![]()Chernobyl: Capping a Catastrophe](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/04/27/science/chernobyl-capping-a-catastrophe.html) [![]()At Chernobyl, Hints of Nature’s Adaptation May 5, 2014](https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/06/science/nature-adapts-to-chernobyl.html) [![]()Review: ‘Chernobyl,’ the Disaster Movie May 3, 2019](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/03/arts/television/review-chernobyl-hbo.html) [Henry Fountain](https://www.nytimes.com/by/henry-fountain) covers climate change, with a focus on the innovations that will be needed to overcome it. He is the author of “The Great Quake,” a book about the 1964 Alaskan earthquake. A version of this article appears in print on June 3, 2019, Section C, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Getting a Nuclear Disaster Right. Mostly.. [Order Reprints](https://nytimes.wrightsmedia.com/) \\| [Today’s Paper](https://www.nytimes.com/section/todayspaper) \\| [Subscribe](https://www.nytimes.com/subscriptions/Multiproduct/lp8HYKU.html?campaignId=48JQY) See more on: [HBO, Inc.](https://www.nytimes.com/topic/company/home-box-office-inc) - Share full article * ## Explore More in TV and Movies ### Not sure what to watch next? We can help. * - Getting Movie Titles Wrong: Staffers at Film at Lincoln Center keep a list of the incorrect movie titles they’ve heard from patrons. 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Readable Markdown	Advertisement [SKIP ADVERTISEMENT](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/02/arts/television/chernobyl-hbo.html#after-top) Ahead of the series finale, a science writer who has toured the site of the 1986 nuclear disaster weighs in. ![](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2019/06/02/arts/02chernobyl1/merlin_155717706_add7fe8a-b85b-40ce-8ef9-96704777969d-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale) A scene from the HBO mini-series “Chernobyl,” about the worst disaster in the history of nuclear power.Credit...HBO June 2, 2019 Henry Fountain is a science writer on the Climate desk of The New York Times. He toured the Chernobyl plant and the exclusion zone around it in 2014. The first thing to understand about the [HBO mini-series “Chernobyl,”](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/03/arts/television/review-chernobyl-hbo.html) which concludes its five-part run on Monday, is that a lot of it is made up. But here’s the second, and more important, thing: It doesn’t really matter. The explosion and fire at Chernobyl’s Unit 4 reactor on April 26, 1986, was an extraordinarily messy and grim event, a radioactive “dirty” bomb on a scale that no one — certainly not anyone in the Soviet Union — was prepared for. It remains the [worst disaster](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/06/books/review-midnight-chernobyl-adam-higginbotham.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FChernobyl%20Nuclear%20Accident%20$1986$&action=click&contentCollection=timestopics&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=2&pgtype=collection) in the history of nuclear power, killing more than 30 people initially (and more in the years that followed, though the numbers are much disputed) and spreading radioactive contamination across large swaths of Soviet and European territory. In the immediate panicked aftermath, and in the months of crisis and confusion until the completion seven months later of the concrete-and-steel sarcophagus that entombed the reactor’s lethal remains, the heroes and villains numbered in the hundreds, and the supporting cast in the hundreds of thousands. The producers of the mini-series don’t sanitize the disaster (sometimes the gore even goes a little too far: The radiation victims are often covered in blood for some reason). Instead, they simplify. They leave the grim alone, but the demands of Hollywood, and of production budgets, take a toll on the messy. Image ![](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2019/06/02/arts/02chernobyl4/merlin_154186002_cf220efd-cf1b-45ad-b1d5-baa8e407059e-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale) In the show, a fire rages at the Unit 4 reactor. Credit...HBO That’s not to say there aren’t many touches of verisimilitude. The rooftop scene in which conscripts have just seconds to toss radioactive debris to the ground is as otherworldly as it must have seemed to those who were there three decades ago. And the Unit 4 control room is faithfully re-created, from the control-rod dials on the walls to the white coats and caps worn by the operators. ([When I visited](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/04/27/science/chernobyl-capping-a-catastrophe.html) the adjacent Unit 3 control room five years ago, I had to wear the same odd outfit, which seemed more appropriate for a bakery than a nuclear power plant.) But if you didn’t know much about Chernobyl you could be forgiven if, after watching, you thought the entire response and cleanup was run by two people, Valery Legasov and Boris Shcherbina, aided valiantly by a third, Ulana Khomyuk. You could also be forgiven if you thought they were all real characters. Legasov and Shcherbina were real, though their roles were twisted and amplifiedto meet the script’s need to keep things moving. Khomyuk, on the other hand, was made out of whole cloth, and her actions strain credulity, from traveling to Chernobyl, uninvited, to investigate the accident to being in the presence of Mikhail Gorbachev at the Kremlin not much later. The producers mention some folderol at the end, that Khomyuk was a composite character created to represent all of the scientists who helped investigate the disaster. Fine, I guess. But much of the rest of “Chernobyl” gets the simplistic Hollywood treatment, too. Image ![](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2019/06/03/arts/02chernobyl2/merlin_154185969_f6d8d48d-8dae-4dd8-bc98-829288a41bf0-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale) From left, Stellan Skarsgard as Boris Shcherbina, Jared Harris as Valery Legasov and Emily Watson as Ulana Khomyuk.Credit...Liam Daniel/HBO Image ![](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2019/06/03/arts/02chernobyl3/merlin_155663226_678fb6b9-a04d-44e0-99d3-247c072564aa-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale) Valery Legasov, head of the Soviet delegation at the Chernobyl Review Conference in Vienna, Aug. 29, 1986.Credit...Rudi Blaha/Associated Press There are the brave, doomed firefighters, ignorant of the radiation hazards they encountered (though nobody climbed up over the reactor debris, as portrayed in the series; they were working the roof to prevent fires from spreading to the undamaged Unit 3). The plucky, can-do miners, brought in to excavate under the reactor to stop the meltdown, stripping naked to get the job done (the series doesn’t say this, but their work ended up largely for naught). The no-nonsense helicopter pilots, risking radiation sickness to drop their loads of lead, boron and sand on the reactor (while one helicopter did crash, killing its crew, the accident happened months later, and radiation had nothing to do with it). I could go on. Don’t get me started about that blue light from the exposed reactor shining high into the night sky in the first episode. Yes, nuclear reactors can produce a blue hue, from something called Cherenkov radiation,but no, there’s no way Unit 4 would have looked like the “Tribute in Light” in Lower Manhattan on the anniversary of Sept. 11. In the end, though, none of this really matters. For the mini-series gets a basic truth right — that the Chernobyl disaster was more about lies, deceit and a rotting political system than it was about bad engineering or abysmal management and training (or, for that matter, about whether nuclear power is inherently good or bad). Image ![](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2019/06/02/arts/02chernobyl5/merlin_155717718_3f1d6869-b266-42f5-ab27-a04c4ab983eb-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale) Workers on the show in protective gear. After the disaster, radioactive contamination spread across large swaths of Soviet and European territory.Credit...Liam Daniel/HBO “Chernobyl” is grim only partly because of all the destruction and death. The need to constantly lie (or cope with the lies of higher-ups) weighs on its characters as heavily as all the lead that was dropped on the reactor. Yes, this basic truth is simplified, too, especially in the final episode, which portrays the trial of three power plant officials. I don’t want to give away much about these scenes, though I will reveal that the geeky term “positive void coefficient” — one of the reactor’s design flaws — was uttered. (As a science writer, I was overjoyed.) The scenes have a lot of tension, and are among the best in the whole mini-series. But they seem drawn more from American movie courtrooms than from Soviet jurisprudence.The idea of someone speaking truth to power in thiscourt seems about as far-fetched as anything else in the whole of “Chernobyl.” How the show gets to its truth, however, is less important than that it gets there. Viewers may come away from “Chernobyl” realizing that, together, people and machines can do awful things — like create a nuclear catastrophe for the ages. If they also come away understanding that in this case, that outcome was more the fault of a government and its apparatchiks,so much the better. [Henry Fountain](https://www.nytimes.com/by/henry-fountain) covers climate change, with a focus on the innovations that will be needed to overcome it. He is the author of “The Great Quake,” a book about the 1964 Alaskan earthquake. A version of this article appears in print on June 3, 2019, Section C, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Getting a Nuclear Disaster Right. Mostly.. 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