Chernobyl-style disaster a risk at abandoned Siberian chemical factory An abandoned chemicals factory in Siberia could cause an environmental disaster akin to the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident unless urgent action is taken to tackle it, a Russian state official has warned. The Usolyekhimprom plant, which produced chlorine and other chemicals in the Irkutsk region, was abandoned due to bankruptcy in 2017, according to Russian news agencies. This is very worrying. I have just finished watching the Chernobyl mini series.. and if it is based on actual facts.. then the population would prefer to go to hell than endure another Chernobyl. Unofficial (official 31) estimates are that as many as 90,000 have died since April, 1986 in the then Soviet Ukraine.. the worst ever nuclear disaster. A renowned nuclear scientist sent by the Communist Politburo to investigate the cause took his own life as he could no longer live with the coverups, cost cutting and lies perpetrated by the Communist State. Such was the extent of their incompetence that a failsafe designed to shut down the reactor actually caused the explosion that made nearby cities and towns no go areas for the next 100 years.
@Craig Swanson Some countries Nuclear Regulators have been quite successful at ensuring safety. France stands out. The U.S. does not. France has had 12 Nuclear Plant accidents, while generating 75% of it's electric power; U.S. has had 49 accidents, while generating only 20% of it's power. "France derives about 75% of its electricity from nuclear energy, due to a long-standing policy based on energy security. Government policy is to reduce this to 50% by 2035. France is the world's largest net exporter of electricity due to its very low cost of generation, and gains over €3 billion per year from this. The country has been very active in developing nuclear technology. Reactors and especially fuel products and services have been a significant export. About 17% of France's electricity is from recycled nuclear fuel." See: https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-a-f/france.aspx The French are doing something "right" when compared to other countries. I can only assume that is because they emphasize "all-out" engineering technique, rather than "build for profit", which invariably introduces error and decreased overall safety. In my opinion. "The Chernobyl disaster was a nuclear accident that occurred on 26 April 1986 at the No. 4 nuclear reactor in the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, near the city of Pripyat in the north of the Ukrainian SSR.[1][2] It is considered the worst nuclear disaster in history and is one of only two nuclear energy disasters rated at seven—the maximum severity—on the International Nuclear Event Scale; the other being the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in Japan." See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster A good rendering of accident compilation is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_and_radiation_accidents_and_incidents
We need @Terry Page to come and give us a little more information that Russians are giving their own people. He lives 1/2 the year in St Petersburg
Makes you wonder if Russia simply doesn't have the funds to take care of this properly. Even with Chernobyl, it's still a radioactive waste land.
Chernobyl survivors assess fact and fiction in TV series. The story of the reactor's catastrophic explosion, as told in an HBO/Sky miniseries, has received the highest ever score for a TV show on the film website IMDB. Russians and Ukrainians have watched it via the internet, and it has had a favourable rating on Russian film site Kinopoisk. I am thinking that if both the Ukranians and Russians favored and approved the mini series then it must have been as close to fact as was possible. After all it was filmed at an existing nuclear power plant.. the Chernobyl sister plant in Lithuania. Close to fact? Not so according to engineer Oleksiy Breus who was in the remains of Reactor 4 mere hours after the Chernobyl disaster.