r/chernobyl

Historical Reality and Radar Problems: Astronomical Costs: The Duga system cost the Soviet Union approximately 7 billion rubles. A staggering sum, roughly double the cost of building the entire Chernobyl nuclear power plant. The Frequency Problem: The radar suffered from a serious design flaw. It operated on short waves, and its signal (the famous "Russian Woodpecker" clicking sound) jammed civilian, commercial, and military radio frequencies worldwide. Northern Lights Interference: The biggest problem was that the radar had to look toward the United States by passing over the North Pole. The Northern Lights and the unstable ionosphere in that area jammed the signals, rendering the Duga-1 radar nearly "blind" and ineffective at accurately detecting missiles. No Trial: Despite these enormous flaws and the wasted money, the Soviet Politburo did not open a criminal investigation against chief designer Franz Kuzminsky or his team. The project simply remained secret and continued to be modified in attempts to fix it.Historical Reality and Radar Problems: Astronomical Costs: The Duga system cost the Soviet Union approximately 7 billion rubles. A staggering sum, roughly double the cost of building the entire Chernobyl nuclear power plant. The Frequency Problem: The radar suffered from a serious design flaw. It operated on short waves, and its signal (the famous "Russian Woodpecker" clicking sound) jammed civilian, commercial, and military radio frequencies worldwide. Northern Lights Interference: The biggest problem was that the radar had to look toward the United States by passing over the North Pole. The Northern Lights and the unstable ionosphere in that area jammed the signals, rendering the Duga-1 radar nearly "blind" and ineffective at accurately detecting missiles. No Trial: Despite these enormous flaws and the wasted money, the Soviet Politburo did not open a criminal investigation against chief designer Franz Kuzminsky or his team. The project simply remained secret and continued to be modified in attempts to fix it.

The K340A was the true "digital brain" of the Duga radar. Designed in 1966, it was, for its time, a masterpiece of Soviet computer engineering. It was built specifically to handle the enormous amount of data transmitted and received by the radar's gigantic antennas. Its operation and structure were based on extraordinary technical features: A unique mathematical trick: The Residue System. Normal computers calculate using the binary system (made up of 0s and 1s), one operation at a time. The K340A instead used the Residue Number System (RNS), a mathematical system based on the remainders of divisions. Parallel calculations: This trick allowed the computer to perform multiple complex calculations simultaneously. Record speed: It could perform 1 million operations per second. It was considered the fastest second-generation computer in the world. Less energy and more endurance: This logic system consumed less electricity and allowed the computer to function even if some hardware parts failed. Physical structure and aesthetics (Hardware) The K340A did not resemble modern computers at all. It was a huge industrial facility: Gigantic dimensions: A single K340A computer took up entire rooms and consisted of 15 or 17 large metal cabinets (racks) for data, plus another 4 cabinets just for electricity. Memory: Inside, there were cabinets dedicated only to RAM memory and others for storing the army's fixed programs. Colossal cooling: Since the thousands of electronic boards produced hellish heat, the Duga building had an entire upper floor dedicated to a very powerful air conditioning system to prevent the circuits from melting. The control console: The military operator sat in front of a dashboard full of colored light bulbs and writing, with two giant built-in printers to read the data. What was its purpose in the Duga radar? The computer had to perform three vital tasks in just a few seconds: Filtering out noise: The radio signal traveled for thousands of kilometers, bouncing off the ionosphere (the upper atmosphere). The computer had to clean the signal from thunderstorms, civilian radios, and space noise. Find the missiles: It had to recognize the faint radio waves reflected by the exhaust fumes of newly launched American ballistic missiles. Calculate the route: If it detected danger, it instantly calculated the missile's trajectory toward Russia to raise the alarm. Today, the destroyed and rusting remains of these secret supercomputers still lie abandoned inside the technological buildings in the fenced-off forest of Chernobyl.

So, looking at the pictures from unit 3 reactor hall (which comes from a recording inside the unit before it was shutdown), there is steam which I would say "leaking" out of the UBS, which made me think of a theory that...

the steel caps from reactor 4 during the power surge could have possibly actually "jumped", but not in the way like the HBO series did, instead, they could have looked like it was jumping in atleast slightly and also only happened on the caps that were detached from it's place,

It could have possibly happened and it's not entirely fake because the HBO series actually did also include some situations that happened in real life, but it was exaggerated for the dramatization of the series that lead to it to become fake, according to me

These drawings by Konstantin Checherov (from Nikolai Karpan’s book Chernobyl: Revenge of the Peaceful Atom) show a speculative reconstruction of the two explosions in Unit 4.
Key problems:

Fig. 14 (First explosion, Phase A, 01:23:46)
There is a large empty gap between the lower biological shield (Сх.ОР) and the reactor vessel / Scheme L. This is incorrect — the RBMK was hermetically sealed. No such open space existed before the explosion.
Fig. 15 (First explosion, Phase B, 01:23:47)
Already shows molten Corium lava flowing down through the steam relief channels during the first explosion. This is highly unrealistic. The scientific consensus is that the fuel needed hours to days to heat up enough to form significant amounts of Corium.
Fig. 16 (Second / upper explosion, 01:23:49)
This one is more plausible. The upper explosion lifted the biological shield (“Elena”) together with a large part of the core and scattered debris across the site.

Bottom line:
Checherov’s drawings are historically interesting but not accurate. The sudden gap under the lower lid and especially the instantaneous Corium lava contradict both the reactor’s design and the established timeline of the accident.

This thread is partly inspired by a recent discussion of how close to the reactor 4 were the reactor hall operators Oleg Genrikh and Anatoly Kurguz when the disaster happened, and my recent rewatching of the Unit 3 tour in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zG9tW7_UNxc (I so wish there was an HD version of it, and in colour)

The Unit 4 is pretty much identical to the Unit 3, just mirrored. We start in the corridor 910/1, walk into the room 905/2, peek into the operators' break room 906/1, then head into the corridor 911/1 which leads to the reactor hall of Unit 3. Note the blind corner at the end of that corridor, it exists to prevent any radiation from blasting through in case something happens in the reactor hall. I do wonder, though, about the lack of any door at the end of that corridor. Something tells me there should be one.

Aleksandr Fyodorovich Akimov (6 May 1953 – 11 May 1986) was the Unit 4 shift leader.

He was at the reactor control panel at the moment of the explosion. Believing the reactor was still intact, he and Leonid Toptunov stayed for hours trying to restore cooling water flow, receiving a fatal dose estimated at over 15 Gy (≈1,500 rad).

He died of acute radiation syndrome in Moscow Hospital No. 6 and was posthumously awarded the Order For Courage.

Almost 40 years ago, on October 2, 1986,

Alexander Yungkind, Leonid Khristich, Nikolai Ganzhuk, and Vladimir Vorobyov were involved in an accident in which all of them lost their lives.

The pilot struck a crane cable and consequently crashed.

In 2017, during preparatory work for the dismantling of Block 4, the tail rotor of the helicopter that crashed in 1986 was discovered.

The propeller had crashed onto the roof of the turbine hall of Block 4, but it was so heavily contaminated that it was immediately walled up with a large amount of concrete.

Rest in peace, heroes.

So sorry I'm a day late, but Happy Heavenly Birthday to Leonid Toptunov.

The destroyed Reactor Unit 4 – April 27, 1986. Photo by V. Yevtushenko.