Yeah, I am looking forward to the rest of it. I did like the over the top warning about concerns over the accuracy of events due to Soviets withholding information.

Not yet, but, I have been watching the previews with great anticipation. I am assuming from your comment that at least the first episode delivers.

I'm currently finishing the latest version of Bosch on Amazon. Then I am on this this.

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If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went. - Will Rogers

Emery's Third Coast Triathlon | Tri Wisconsin Triathlon Team | Push Endurance | GLWR

hope to watch it too. I did see a documentary about Chernobyl in the past, horrible.

I'm afraid to watch it. I was around for that shit (little kid) not all that far away. Don't need anxiety over potentially developing cancer soon... Looks like compelling TV, though.

The show looks really cool, but I don't have HBO. If it wasn't for the kids I'd drop Netflix and pick up HBO.

I haven't finished the first episode yet. It was just so stressful thinking, "That person is dead already, they don't know it, and it will be painful."

I enjoyed the first episode but must have missed the warning about the accuracy. I seem to recall a story on 60 Minutes recently about it where they had some drone video from the scene. I may have to go and check that out again. In a weird way, I would rather this kind of series be filmed with Russian actors that speak the language and subtitles. I'm so used to reading the closed captioning that it doesn't bother me and I think it would be more "authentic."

I got the impression from the trailers that this was a disaster film (series) based on Cherynobl, but not really meant to be taken for what really happened.

that is what i was saying to myself in nearly every scene.

When Superman shows up and saves everyone you'll really know this was not to be taken as reality.

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"The great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do."

The producers are claiming they strove to be as accurate as possible, minimizing combining characters, over-emphasizing/minimizing events, etc.

Re. the fidelity of the Russian investigations, I'm guessing this will be as big a part of their story as the actual event and clean-up since it opens with a suicide that is rooted in the investigation side rather than the actual event. Or so says Wikipedia.

I thought the first episode was good, looking forward to the rest.

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Brian

Gonna buy a fast car, put on my lead boots, take a long, long drive
I may end up spending all my money, but I'll still be alive

There have been a few PBS shows about it recently.

You can get fairly close from certain directions, but downwind you've got to stay kilometers away. The new steel enclosure they put up the last few years - workers were only allowed to work 5 hour days for a month, they take at least 15 days off.

The book "Midnight in Chernobyl" by Adam Higganbotham came out a couple of months ago...really good read. Goes into all of the background information on the Soviet nuclear industry and why the type of reactor that was installed in Chernobyl was an accident waiting to happen. Highly recommended.

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___________________________________________________
Taco cat spelled backwards is....taco cat.

Just put the e-book and audio book on my hold list at my local library. We'll see which is available first. Thanks for the tip.

BTW, I watched the first episode and really liked it. I also recommend the associated podcast. I listened to the first episode the morning after I watched the show. It was really good and gave a lot more background into what happened and what they filmed compared to real events. (spoiler, the first episode tracked real events very closely)

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Kevin

http://kevinmetcalfe.dreamhosters.com
My Strava

Same here.

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"You can never win or lose if you don't run the race." - Richard Butler

Got halfway through the first episode last night. Looks great so far. I look forward to watching the rest. Great idea for a mini series.

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Long Chile was a silly place.

I still lived in France when it happened. in 1988, I worked at Saclay (one of the nuclear centers in France) during the summer, making pharma tracers.
We had regular tests to see exposure. At the end of the summer, the full test showed a peak of Cesium 137. Heard that basically all of Western Europe had it after
Chernobyl. Low dose, but still...

Probably fake news, if it really happened there would be more people with super powers in Europe.

That's crazy. I was pretty young at the time and, therefore, did not appreciate the magnitude of the situation. Watching this series has been very eye-opening.

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If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went. - Will Rogers

Emery's Third Coast Triathlon | Tri Wisconsin Triathlon Team | Push Endurance | GLWR

And the period of Cesium 137 is 30 years by the way, vs just a few days for iodine 131.
Haven't looked at the data of say thyroid cancers in Western Europe post 1986, but it could be interesting.

Just finished ep. 1 and I'm all in. The non-Russian accents detract a bit, but the story is f'n compelling.

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_________________________________________________
"The will to win means nothing without the will to prepare" - Juma Ikangaa

http://www.litespeed.com

Such a well done series so far through the first three episodes. I'm amazed at how little (if any) protection people wore as they were on site during the days/weeks after the explosion while trying to put the fire out and even to mitigate the situation by draining the water and having the miners dig down. They even stripped naked due to the hear since they weren't allowed fans. The hospital staff had minimal protection in treating the plant technicians and firefighters who were first on scene.

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"You can never win or lose if you don't run the race." - Richard Butler

I am loving this series.

Also, there is a podcast that goes along with each episode that gives a lot more context on certain scenes and the depth the crew went through in researching the event. It makes the show just that much better. If you like the show, follow the podcast as well.

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Long Chile was a silly place.

It’s a great mini series so far and the companion podcast adds so much more to each episode. It’s crazy when they talk about going to the site, I don’t think I would have been able to do that. Hearing those dosimeters crackling I would have bailed lol

Damn, Ep. 4 was hard to watch. Can't imagine being in Pavel's shoes...

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_________________________________________________
"The will to win means nothing without the will to prepare" - Juma Ikangaa

http://www.litespeed.com

I had to skip through it when they showed his second run. I couldn't watch his story line any further.

Overall - The level of arrogance and deception by the government was staggering.

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If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went. - Will Rogers

Emery's Third Coast Triathlon | Tri Wisconsin Triathlon Team | Push Endurance | GLWR

I generally like to watch things like this twice, but I won't watch Ep. 4 again.

I agree about the level of arrogance and deception and the efforts made to protect the country's reputation. The outright refusal to seek help from anyone but Germany (and misrepresenting the level of radiation even then, thus rendering their assistance useless), and willingness to sacrifice who knows how many to keep a lid on things is simply unforgivable.

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_________________________________________________
"The will to win means nothing without the will to prepare" - Juma Ikangaa

http://www.litespeed.com

Just watched episode four, you nailed it perfectly with the word staggering.

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"You can never win or lose if you don't run the race." - Richard Butler

  haven't watched episode 4 yet. # 3 was difficult w/ the radiation victims.. i had to fast forward through those scenes. is that what is upsetting about episode 4, or is it something else?

Something else. Actually, many more something elses. It's a tough episode to watch, but, I do not believe there were any scenes showing the severe radiation victims. At least I do not recall any. There is only one interview with one of the facility operators and he does not bare any of the radiation burns you saw in Episode 3.

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If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went. - Will Rogers

Emery's Third Coast Triathlon | Tri Wisconsin Triathlon Team | Push Endurance | GLWR

Episode 4 was really hard to watch. The Pavel story line was a bit much for the animal lover in me.

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Favorite Gear: Dimond | Cadex | Desoto Sport | Hoka One One

Nothing like that - as JSA said, a lot of something elses where the episode focused on the steps that Soviets took to mitigate the problem and the spreading of the problem while being more focused on saving face and downplaying how bad it actually was. Disturbing for a variety of reasons but still worth watching as this is an excellent series and does a tremendous job of telling a very harrowing story.

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"You can never win or lose if you don't run the race." - Richard Butler

I can count the number of times I've been to Chernobyl on one hand.

Eight, to be exact.

It is largely based on Tapes recorded by Valery Alekseyevich Legasov (Jared Harris's character) that were very critical of the handling and how the bureaucracy cost lives. I had family we sponsored to come here after the events so am acutely aware of the situation as it played out. The plume of smoke that could be seen in Kiev. How blue busses mysteriously showed up with thousands from Pripyat, but no explanation given as to why. How politicians and higher level bureaucrats were saying it was safe, but evacuating their children. It was bad, and it should be a wake up call for any Bernie supporter as he was a huge proponent of the soviet system at that time.

In the USSR, party loyalty and position was of most importance to the actual shot callers, this is why they assigned a high level party apparatchik to the process. Actual knowledge and expertise took a distance place in the priority list. Second was the illusion of competence (party competence) that must be maintained. In a capitalist world, a loser like Bernie Sanders has not value, but as we saw in that show, a shoe factory worker with ties to the party can quickly become in charge. This presents a very real problem when things don't run smoothly. This is why information must be tightly controlled, why dissent must be suppressed immediately and why experts on matters must be kept on tight political leashes.

See the film Citizen X about the hunt for Andrei Chikatilo and how denial, party loyalty, and bureaucracy had tragic consequences as well. The communist and heavy socialism sucks, it can't deliver, and only works with a subservient citizenry that is ok with basic comfort. People who live in section 8 housing here in the US have it better than parts of the middle class in the USSR did. But breadlines were a good thing according to Bernie.

I watched the final episode last night, very well done where it focused on Legasov's testimony and flashbacks to the actual failed test that caused the explosion (Jared Harris was excellent in this role BTW, won't be surprised to see him walk away with an Emmy). I was surprised at the end when they showed actual clips at how many folks portrayed actually survived, especially the three divers despite the fact that they wore primitive equipment. Same for the miners where there were 400 working around the clock (100 of whom died before reaching age 40) - I would have expected that they would have all been gone within a few years. On the flipside, the estimated death toll vs what the Soviet Union claimed (only 31) is still devastating.

This was such a very well-made series, one of the best HBO has ever done IMO. Glad I watched it.

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"You can never win or lose if you don't run the race." - Richard Butler

I agree with your assessment. Exceptional.

How on earth did those divers survive? Didn't Legasov say they would be dead within a couple weeks?

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If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went. - Will Rogers

Emery's Third Coast Triathlon | Tri Wisconsin Triathlon Team | Push Endurance | GLWR

Agreed - extremely well done series and I'm glad I stayed up past my bedtime to watch all of the finale. I was also surprised to learn that the divers survived - apparently, due to the fact that they were surrounded by water which mitigated their exposure, and also the rebreathers they wore which prevented inhalation of particulates. Also found the footage from inside the Pipryat hospital sobering - when they showed the room where the first responders' clothing had been piled, and the reading on the Geiger counter - still super hot. The Legasov testimony was fantastic and I was glad to get a detailed scientific explanation of the cause, and agree that they tied it together perfectly with the flashbacks. One concerning thing they mentioned at the end - the containment building was designed to last (only) 100 years...tick, tick, tick.;.

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_________________________________________________
"The will to win means nothing without the will to prepare" - Juma Ikangaa

http://www.litespeed.com

I thought the fact that the water was highly radiated was the reason they were not expected to survive. No?

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If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went. - Will Rogers

Emery's Third Coast Triathlon | Tri Wisconsin Triathlon Team | Push Endurance | GLWR

I thought the same thing, and was surprised when someone told me that the water offered some protection. Glad you questioned it - my Google-fu (and the EPA) say it's true - https://www.epa.gov/...g-yourself-radiation

• Time: For people who are exposed to radiationradiationEnergy given off as either particles or rays. in addition to natural background radiation, limiting or minimizing the exposure time reduces the dose from the radiation source.
• Distance: Just as the heat from a fire reduces as you move further away, the dose of radiation decreases dramatically as you increase your distance from the source.
• Shielding: Barriers of lead, concrete, or water provide protection from penetrating gamma raysgamma raysA form of ionizing radiation that is made up of weightless packets of energy called photons. Gamma rays can pass completely through the human body; as they pass through, they can cause damage to tissue and DNA.and x-raysx-raysA form of ionizing radiation made up of photons. X-rays are capable of passing completely through the human body. Medical x-rays are the single largest source of man-made radiation exposure.. This is why certain radioactive materials are stored under water or in concrete or lead-lined rooms, and why dentists place a lead blanket on patients receiving x-rays of their teeth. Therefore, inserting the proper shield between you and a radiation source will greatly reduce or eliminate the dose you receive.​

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_________________________________________________
"The will to win means nothing without the will to prepare" - Juma Ikangaa

http://www.litespeed.com

Like you I watch a lot of TV.....

None of it "live".

Like you on an Ipad with headphones. In bed next to wife who is watching news or something else on "live" TV.

This mini series is so exceptional it's the first time I've told her she really needs to watch something on HBO. I will most likely re-watch with her.

You know the most likely shield for interplanetary ships i.e. Mars? Water

Depends on the radiation, the gear they were wearing would be pretty good for alpha and beta radiation. The thick rubber is good breathing the contained air prevents the inhalation anything dangerous. Water itself will only really be outputting alpha radiation (maybe beta). So the gieger counters may be going crazy, but they had decent protection. Drinking that water would have been really bad.

The biggest issue is what elements may be carried in the water, like graphite from the core. The good news is that water will do a good job of blocking gamma radiation from these elements in the core, so you need to be much closer than if there is no water, like it was on the roof. Also if the water was not flowing, these elements would sink to the bottom after a bit. So there may have been some areas down there that would have been really bad, but they would have had to have gotten pretty close to get a large dose. Or maybe not much of the nasty stuff from the core actually made it down there.

Interesting. Thanks everyone for the replies. I misunderstood that aspect of it.

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If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went. - Will Rogers

Emery's Third Coast Triathlon | Tri Wisconsin Triathlon Team | Push Endurance | GLWR

Thinking I might have to take advantage of the "first week free" deal and binge watch this, as well as the last couple of seasons of Game of Thrones.

I would suggest it, I mean it is created/written by the writer of Hangover 3 and Scary Movie 4, so how could it be bad?

I think my favorite character is the mining foreman. "No. We start tonight. I don't want my men here one second longer than they have to."

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War is god

Here's a science writer's brief take on the series:https://www.nytimes.com/...n/chernobyl-hbo.html

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War is god

I can't say enough positive things about this program. Fascinating subject matter, superbly written and acted, and absolutely stunning in detail about what really happened there, and how. The technical aspects, the human element, all of it just perfectly captured. Do yourself a favor and listen to the corresponding podcast after each episode, to fill in the gaps.

Think Steven Speilberg meets Ken Burns. I'd be stunned if this doesn't rake in the hardware at every award ceremony.

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The devil made me do it the first time, second time I done it on my own - W

I agree very well done and fascinating. I listened to the podcast as well and found it enjoyable too.

OTOH, since I have this free week I figured I'd watch the last two seasons of Games of Thrones that I hadn't seen. I have a few more episodes to finish it and I'm literally forcing myself to finish just because I've invested so much time into it at this point I feel like I should finish. Some of the acting and dialogue is just cringe-worthy, not to mention shit doesn't make sense sometimes.

* spoiler alert*













I think episode 4 was worth watching for the roof clearing scene. That was incredibly intense but so well done.

Pavel's story line made my stomach turn.

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Long Chile was a silly place.

From the podcast, the Pavel story is based on first hand accounts (including the puppies) and I can't recall whether the creator said they filmed it and just couldn't show it because it would be too much or if there were just accounts that sometimes the dogs wouldn't be dead when they dumped them in the pits to be buried in concrete, so they'd just buried them alive.

They shot the scene, but felt it was gratuitous and manipulative. It's fascinating listening to the writer talk about the decisions of what to show and what to leave to the viewer's imagination.

They struck a fine balance.

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The devil made me do it the first time, second time I done it on my own - W

Russia to make its own show about Chernobyl that implicates the US

Sweet baby Jesus, please let a reporter ask Trump about this.

"Many people are saying this, very strongly. I don't know. Do you know? No one really knows what happened there and believe me, no one knows more about nucular power than me."

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The devil made me do it the first time, second time I done it on my own - W

Just finished watching the series last night. Wow! Just wow! Well done, and very eye opening. A few disjointed thoughts.......

* The show had a very late 70s/early 80s style to it. Lots of scenes that would just play out with no dialogue, backed by creepy music to really let the tension build. It reminded me a lot of the way Alien was shot.

* I think I sat on my couch holding back tears during the last 5 minutes of the series. Band of Brothers is the only other show to have had that kind of effect.

* It really makes me rethink the idea of using nukes for power. Yes, its relatively safe, but when something goes wrong, it can be really, really, really bad. Like holy shit, how much worse could Chenobyl have been? What if an earth quake happens in the wrong place? What if someone figures out how to sabotage a plant? Is the only thing keeping these things from blowing up really a bunch of humans turning knobs and pushing buttons?

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-----------------------------Baron Von Speedypants
-----------------------------RunTraining articles here:
http://forum.slowtwitch.com/...runtraining;#1612485

The type of reactor the Soviets were using are completely different than even old reactors elsewhere. Their reactor had no containment vessel, it was just an ordinary building. The containment vessel is incredibly expensive because it is several feet of hardened concrete surrounding the entire core. They are designed so a plane can fly into them and not crack it. There are other crazy design features that make Chernobyl dangerous as well. There are plenty of youtube videos about it. All I can say, is the Russians are nuts when it comes to nuclear power and sadly they haven't changed much even after the fall of the Soviet Union.

Modern reactors are designed in such a way that an explosion is physically impossible, even if all the water boils away. That is the safeguard western reactors have that the Soviets ignored, physics.

If they'd had that steam explosion, it would have been way worse.
Fukushima is a good example. The main problem here was that they did not have sufficiently imaginative people working on the failure scenarios (or, the scenarios they came up with were disregarded). Putting the backup generators for the (essential) coolant pumps below sea level? What were they thinking?
That will always be a potential risk but it applies in some respects to regular generation plants as well. A prolonged power outage in a densely populated area (in winter) is no joke.

Well, no (or at least, not normally). Chernobyl was a case where under-trained and poorly educated operators deliberately put the reactor system into an unsafe state, after first having disabled all the safety mechanisms and automatic controls that would have prevented them from doing so. Then, the RMBK reactors control rod design was such that it would exacerbate any problems with the recovery from that state.

I think that (fission) nuclear power is still going to have to be a necessary technology until we hopefully figure out how to do fusion power at any efficiency level. The problem with the current reactors, pretty much over the entire world, is that they're based on 1960's technology and understanding of nuclear physics. There have been lots of proposals for third and fourth-generation reactors that are more scalable as well as being less of a problem from a nuclear arms proliferation point of view, and having better inherent safety.

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Less is more.

Wasn't Three Mile Island also pretty close to a disaster?

No offense, but it seems like every defense of nuclear is a "Well, yeah but........."


I'm just thinking in terms of stacking errors and probability. "Safe," means "mostly safe," and "would only happen in this unlikely circumstance." But the more reactors we have, and the longer we have them for, the more likely those unlikely circumstances become, and when its bad, it can be really, really bad.

Again, I'm not saying that we should shut them all down, but.......wow.

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-----------------------------Baron Von Speedypants
-----------------------------RunTraining articles here:
http://forum.slowtwitch.com/...runtraining;#1612485

Not like Chernobyl. And TMI is why would should be building new reactors. We are keeping older reactors alive because nothing can replace the power they generate.

I don't think we have to beat around the bush there. It was a disaster.


As other posters noted, the physics of reactor operation are understandable and they are predictable. It's a people problem. Three Mile Island, according to Wikipedia:
The accident began with failures in the non-nuclear secondary system, followed by a stuck-open pilot-operated relief valve in the primary system, which allowed large amounts of nuclear reactor coolant to escape. The mechanical failures were compounded by the initial failure of plant operators to recognize the situation as a loss-of-coolant accident due to inadequate training and human factors, such as human-computer interaction design oversights relating to ambiguous control room indicators in the power plant's user interface. In particular, a hidden indicator light led to an operator manually overriding the automatic emergency cooling system of the reactor because the operator mistakenly believed that there was too much coolant water present in the reactor and causing the steam pressure release.[5]

They had bad training, hidden indicator lights, and ambiguous controls.

Could we do future reactors better? Absolutely. But it would cost time, money and effort to provide the extra training, and to properly design the system so that the unlikely circumstances had known remedies (and so that the remedies would be properly applied). So, I don't know if we will actually get there.

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Less is more.

I'm hopeful that the political will to expand nuclear will return but at the moment (following Fukushima and HBO's irresponsibly fictionalized account of Chernobyl) I don't see it happening for a long time. There are currently just too many ignorant people who want to have their cake (clean energy) and eat it too (clean energy that has no drawbacks).

Here's an article on some of the startups in the space and their innovations:

https://www.wired.com/story/next-gen-nuclear/

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War is god

Sad they put out these scarumentaries that are off by a factor of a million. This guy explains a lot of outrageous exaggerations in the movie. Like how the experts say that the plant could blow up like a 3-5 megatons nuclear bomb (or 3-5,000 tons worth of TNT). Plants are not complexly designed to be a nuclear bomb, and they don't use super expensive highly enriched uranium, not even close.


Even under worst case scenario (which this was real bad), they talk of about an explosion that would raise Minsk (city) 320 km away. Using software Nukemap if you blew up not at a 5 megaton bomb but a 100,000 megaton bomb you still would have been fine in Minsk.



To bad they have scared the populace about Nuclear energy. It is one of the cleanest and safest ways to produce clean energy

Japanese technology, operations and quality is generally considered much more refined than Soviet.
Yet Fukoshima happened. Better government response, and somewhat different events - but there were multiple hydrogen explosions and core criticality and ultimate meltdown.

The problem is that Nuclear Power Plants are designed to withstand 1-in-a-1,000 or 10,000 or 1,000,000 year events. The engineering is pretty good to withstand conditions below that event. But we have proven pretty shitty at predicting the frequency of rare events.

For example- whether its Climate change or something else - we've been getting 1-in-a-20 year storms every year. 1-in-a-100 year storms every few years. Our designs are not coping with these. https://fivethirtyeight.com/...-of-100-year-floods/

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Remember - It's important to be comfortable in your own skin... because it turns out society frowns on wearing other people's

Fukashima was an older reactor. It was built in 1967. TMI was built around the same timeframe.

And for everything that happened at Fukashima, the radiation hasn't killed anyone afaik. The disaster/storm killed many people. The stress has killed many people. There might be elevated risk of cancer for some people, but even that is a big if.

I do know that people die and get cancer every day from pumping carbon fuels into the air. People die in mining and petro operations on a regular basis. People die from refinery and chemical processing related to carbon use. Plenty of sites are contaminated from carbon use, which lead to death and cancer.

If you look at the totality of risk, nuclear seems to be far safer than using carbon fuels.

There are still RBMK reactors running in Russia. And based on their recent failed missile test, they seem to have not learned the lessons of Chernobyl. So my confidence in their nuclear efforts is not high.

I read Midnight in Chernobyl after watching the series and it focused heavily on the design flaws associated with the Soviet-built reactors. The book was also more critical of Legasov than the series where he toed the party line when he presented in Vienna; the series mentioned it but the book took him to task.

I thought the series as a whole was excellent, one of the best that HBO has done. Jared Harris should walk away with an Emmy.

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"You can never win or lose if you don't run the race." - Richard Butler

Yes, but they've supposedly been retro-fitted to change void coefficients, etc, so the specific fault conditions of Chernobyl are far less likely.

I haven't read the book, but my impression from the series was that he *didn't* toe the line in Vienna. Toeing the line would have been blaming the operators for everything. Instead he pointed out design flaws, and when questioned about why the design flaws existed answered "to save money." That may not be true to reality, but was my impression from the series.

In any case, it's pretty clear that no one was more critical of Legasov than Legasov.

It's not so much the reactors I'm worried about, but the government which manages them. It's very troubling that they are back to their old tricks of hiding deadly accidents.

  


So to keep half the continent from being uninhabitable, I just have to rely on people not screwing up? That doesn't make me sleep well.

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-----------------------------Baron Von Speedypants
-----------------------------RunTraining articles here:
http://forum.slowtwitch.com/...runtraining;#1612485

How many people here, in the US, want to dismantle the department of energy? Think about that for a second.

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-----------------------------Baron Von Speedypants
-----------------------------RunTraining articles here:
http://forum.slowtwitch.com/...runtraining;#1612485

You might feel differently if you knew a little bit more about the people that you are counting on to not screw up. The training program for in-plant operators is about a year, for control room operators it's another 2 years on top of that. For senior reactor operators (supervisors in the control room), it's an additional 2 years on top of their 4 year engineering/tech degree. Every 5th or 6th week (depending on the rotating shift schedule at that specific plant) is spent requalifying and training in the simulator. Their NRC issued licenses state their overriding priority as (paraphrasing from memory) "taking all necessary actions to protect the health and safety of the public."
Also, the training and industry changed substantially after TMI - moving to a symptom based approach for transient mitigation that relied more heavily on an understanding thermo-hydraulic nuclear physics and how to protect the 3 fission product barriers, prioritizing and maintaining critical safety functions, and ultimately protecting the health and safety of the public.

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"Life is fragile - we are all just a slip or a car crash away from being a very different person."

Fukushima is a good example. The main problem here was that they did not have sufficiently imaginative people working on the failure scenarios (or, the scenarios they came up with were disregarded). Putting the backup generators for the (essential) coolant pumps below sea level? What were they thinking?

A couple of points worth making in regard to this statement - TEPCO knew that their design basis tsunami barrier was insufficient for the worst case risk calculated wave height...and did nothing with that engineering documentation to mitigate the issue. There were discussions almost a decade earlier about raising the seawall height.
Also, the emergency diesel generators were not below sea level - they were at least 15 feet above sea level from everything I have read, then they were hit with a 47 foot wave and everything was flooded, the fuel supply was destroyed, and the batteries were damaged. Why would you put a huge, heavy piece of equipment on the lowest floor of a building? Seismic qualification.

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"Life is fragile - we are all just a slip or a car crash away from being a very different person."

I don't think you understand. The smartest, best trained person in the history of the world can screw up. There is no shortage of examples.

And each nuclear plant you add, the odds of one of those screwups happening increases, and we aren't talking about plane crashes or oil spills. We're talking about a pretty disastrous consequence.

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-----------------------------Baron Von Speedypants
-----------------------------RunTraining articles here:
http://forum.slowtwitch.com/...runtraining;#1612485

They screwed up.

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-----------------------------Baron Von Speedypants
-----------------------------RunTraining articles here:
http://forum.slowtwitch.com/...runtraining;#1612485

Correct, humans make mistakes. Everyone knows that. Hence, they do not operate alone or in a vacuum. They operate with peer checks, oversight, constant training and testing, and learning from others' mistakes.

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"Life is fragile - we are all just a slip or a car crash away from being a very different person."

So as a result, another nuclear disaster is impossible?

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-----------------------------Baron Von Speedypants
-----------------------------RunTraining articles here:
http://forum.slowtwitch.com/...runtraining;#1612485

I'm with Barry on this one
People will usually find a way to screw stuff up