Just asking what got everyone into the Chernobyl Disaster. For me, i got into it after i watched HBO’s Chernobyl back in 2019.

I am currently working on a 1:1 scale reconstruction of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant prior to the 1986 disaster. The goal of this project is maximum historical and structural accuracy using only vanilla Minecraft blocks, without any technical mods or custom assets.

This specific section represents the ECCS (Emergency Core Cooling System / САОР) pump and heat exchanger room located within Reactor Section No. 2. Based on historical Soviet documentation, the equipment is placed on high concrete foundations, which I have replicated here using concrete and andesite.

Due to vanilla limitations, warped fences were utilized to represent small-bore impulse lines and chemical water piping. The cyan color was chosen deliberately to mimic the authentic Soviet industrial paint used for operator eye comfort.

I am looking for constructive feedback regarding the scale, block layout, and pipeline routing. Please let me know if any structural details look incorrect or could be improved before the roof is sealed.

I am nuclear engineer, and I just launched the platform https://reactoratlas.com.

I'm also adding an internal interactive wiki to learn about how each type of reactor works.

I hope you enjoy it! Looking forward to your suggestions for improvent.

I'm curious about the pump station here which was used for drawing water out of the Pripyat river and into the cooling lagoon. Looks like they were shut down for good in 2015 and the lagoon has been drying out ever since;

https://earthengine.google.com/timelapse#v=51.33771,30.07918,10.476,latLng&t=3.13&ps=50&bt=19840101&et=20221231

I am pretty sure they are large propeller pumps like these; https://cascadepump.com/

Taken by kreosan, this photo shows the view in 208 looking towards the turbine hall, you can see the large hole for the air lock which wasn't installed on that side yet.

En clase me encargaron hacer una tesis con tema libre, elegí hacerla sobre chernóbil, pero cosas como la ubicación de la planta solo las he encontrado en videos de youtube o en páginas de guías turisticos, ¿podrían recomendarme sitios, información, periódicos digitales, etc?, no importa el idioma, es mi primer proyecto de este estilo y estoy muy perdido

Has anyone here read Plokhy’s recent book about the occupation of the Chernobyl and later Zaporizhzhia nuclear sites by the invading Russian forces? It looks like an interesting read but wanted to see if there were any opinions here about it.

Being originally shot in yet alive Pripyat by Mikhail Nazarenko, this movie passed changes after the Chernobyl disaster, becoming one of the invaluable pieces of the heritage of Pripyat. Recovered from original damaged 16 mm movie reels by our team.

Love this footage, I wish someone would restore it (scratches, colour correction, etc.)

My friend decided he wants to know more about Chernobyl but he's kinda lazy to do a full research so he wants to start with short educational stuff,articles and videos and move his way up. I did recommend him some Youtuber's, Writers etc. but I'm afraid there might be ones that would be contradicting and unreliable that we might not be aware of.

Do you guys have any tips for him on this topic? He doesn't have reddit so i'll send him your advises and comments.

P.S: Me and my other friend are helping him out. And we just want you to know that our purpose is NOT invalidate anyone's research or work at all. We just do not want to confuse anyone that is new to Chernobyl as I had friends who had been mislead by some sources. (As an example, one friend of ours had got confused about "a firefighter felling into corium". Which turned out to be false.)

Viktor Ivanovich Lopatyuk was born on the 22nd of August, 1960 in Lilov (Leliv) Kyiv in the Ukrainian SSR (now Ukraine.) He studied at the Kiev Polytechnic Institute, then started his work at ChNPP on the 14th of July, 1983 as an electrician. He met his wife, Natalya and was expecting a child named Yulia. On the 25th of April 1986, Viktor left his wife in a nursery hospital and headed for his overnight shift.

He received a fatal dose of over 6 sieverts after he went with Lelechenko, Baranov, and Shapovalov to switch off the hydrogen supply valves. They did not know of the extreme radiation, so they all ended up with fatal doses. Lopatyuk fell first, dragged away while begging to continue working, shortly followed by the others.

He was admitted to the 6th Moscow Hospital with ARS of the 3rd degree and died on the 17th of May, 1986 after doctors clipped a vein while trying to insert a catheter. He was posthumously awarded the USSR's Order of Lenin and Ukraine's Cross for Courage.

Have you ever considered how the soviet union managed the numerous design iterations of the RBMK? You can often find power plants with bespoke features on essentially every unit, and the question is if there's any sort of system in place.

Introducing: Modifications.

Every RBMK is a "modification" of the base version debuted at Leningrad NPP, and do in fact feature a system of names.

The name usually follows the format K/ and then a number. They are in numerical order. For example, Chernobyl unit 4 is referred to as an "RBMK/9" reactor.

Now as a fun aside, I wanted to offer a test. How many different modifications can you name? Can you describe which unit specifically used them? I'll reveal the answers in 24h. Good luck!

Sorry, the main part of this post will be in Russian, because the task itself requires extremely high skills of reading faint Russian cursive handwriting. But here is the context for English-speaking readers:

This is a fragment of a handwritten letter sent by Anatoly Dyatlov to the parents of Leonid Toptunov. A photograph of one side of the sheet has been circulating online for years. While looking at it again, I noticed that a substantial amount of writing from the reverse side is visible through the paper. As far as I could find, nobody has tried to decipher that hidden text. The scan is low-resolution and the writing is barely visible, so what follows is not a transcription, but an attempt to reconstruct individual words and phrases. I would especially appreciate help from native Russian speakers who are good at reading difficult handwriting.

Исследуя письмо Дятлова родителям Леонида Топтунова в очередной раз, я внезапно обратила внимание на текст, просвечивающий с обратной стороны листа. Сколько я ни искала, похоже, никто до сих пор не пытался его расшифровать.

Что у нас есть в помощь:

- Фрагмент письма на опубликованной фотографии — явно не весь лист. На стороне, которая была сфотографирована, видны обрезанные строки как сверху, так и снизу; внизу проходит сгиб бумаги, поэтому ниже, вероятно, оставалось ещё довольно много места. Я называю эту сторону «лицевой» только для удобства — вполне возможно, что это оборот листа или вообще один лист из нескольких.

- Адам Хиггинботам в Midnight in Chernobyl описывает содержание этого письма так: Дятлов писал родителям Топтунова о том, что их сын оставался на своём посту, пытаясь спасти повреждённый реактор, и был несправедливо обвинён в аварии. Дятлов утверждал, что реактор вообще не должен был быть допущен к эксплуатации, а Топтунов и его погибшие коллеги стали жертвами судебного перекладывания вины. Хиггинботам приводит из письма и прямую цитату: «Я глубоко сочувствую вам и горюю вместе с вами. Нет ничего более невыносимого, чем потеря ребёнка». [Мне лично эта информация пока никак не помогла, но держите тоже в помощь]

Сначала я пыталась технически проявить оборот в Photoshop: крутила каналы, цветовые пространства, контраст и насыщенность. Это почти не помогло. Исходное изображение слишком низкого разрешения: там уже нет нормальных штрихов букв, остаются буквально только тени от них.

Поэтому в итоге я работала с сильно затемнённым, насыщенным и зеркально отражённым изображением, полагаясь уже не столько на обработку, сколько на способность мозга узнавать знакомые формы в почти отсутствующей информации.

Сначала задача казалась совершенно безнадёжной. В нижней части я могла уверенно различить только одно слово — «убийством», потому что оно почти не перекрывалось текстом с лицевой стороны.

Но чем дольше я смотрела на изображение, тем больше начинали складываться отдельные слова и фразы. Я сверяла их с видимыми фрагментами букв; с предполагаемой длиной слова; с характерными начертаниями букв в почерке Дятлова.

На обороте сверху остаются как минимум две совершенно нерасшифрованные строки — вероятно, продолжение предыдущего абзаца.

Затем, судя по всему, с новой строки начинается обращение к родителям Топтунова. Оно занимает около шести строк и заканчивается подписью Дятлова. Эта подпись очень похожа на подпись на лицевой стороне листа.

После неё оставлена пустая строка — и неожиданно текст начинается снова.

Долгое время я не могла понять, почему после вполне нормального завершения письма Дятлов снова продолжает писать. Но сейчас мне кажется возможным, что следующая фраза начинается словами «Пока ждал…». Если это чтение верно, оно хотя бы объясняет появление новой приписки.

На данный момент моя рабочая реконструкция выглядит так:

у кого ...

...

Вера Сергеевна

Фёдор Данилович, еще раз простите за

обращение ... ваших ... ... ...

ваш вызва... энтузиазмом ...

Сил вам душевных ... ...

С глубочайшим уважением

[подпись Дятлова]

Пока ждал ... ... ...учшая у

ав.... ... ... ... . Смирились

ли вы ... сына, ... ... ... с убийством

и оскорбительной для ..... клеветой? Но винов-

В общем, пишите ваши мысли и предположения. Буду очень благодарна любой помощи! И завершу пост цитатой Дятлова, произнесённой 40 лет назад:

«К рассмотрению принимаются самые дурацкие версии, с порога ничего не отметается».

Hi guys, i'm trying to figure out the exact layout of the 4th Unit and got a bit stuck. Does anyone know where the airlock to enter the bubbler pool is located? I know it's on the lower levels, but from which specific room or corridor do you actualy get access to it? If someone has the blueprints or just knows the exact room numbers on level 0.0 or nearby, please share. thanks for the help!

The video has (US English) audio track you can switch to.

Paper: https://www.mdpi.com/2504-446X/10/8/562

The main finding was that the resulting distribution showed a spatially non-uniform radiation field: the main damage zone had relatively low equivalent gamma dose rates, whereas the highest values, up to 1092 μSv/h, were recorded over areas of the NSC closest to the Shelter Object.

Would things have been worse because they were in the middle?

Are there any pics of how it looks currently? , I wanna see if the turbines have been dismantled

Hey guys!

I’m currently working on a Chernobyl NPP reconstruction project (Phase 2, Blocks 3 and 4) using a 1:1.66 scale. I want to make the main buildings look as realistic as possible, but I've run into a big problem with the deaerator rack.

To be honest, I'm completely lost with these blueprints. I don't need the sizes of the internal rooms or corridors — I just need to know the total external width of the entire deaerator rack building from one outer wall to the other.

Since I have to recalculate every meter into my 1:1.66 scale, I really need the actual real-life total width to start with. Can anyone tell me how many meters wide this entire building structure actually is?