Rethinking Chernobyl

Big Picture Science

Science, Technology

4.5 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 6 May 2019

⏱️ 54 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The catastrophic explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in April 1986 triggered the full-scale destruction of the reactor. But now researchers with access to once-classified Soviet documents are challenging the official version of what happened both before and after the explosion. They say that the accident was worse than we thought and that a number of factors – from paranoia to poor engineering – made the mishap inevitable. Others claim a much larger death toll from extended exposure to low levels of radiation. But with nuclear energy being a possibly essential component of dealing with rising carbon dioxide emissions, how do we evaluate risk under the long shadow of Chernobyl? Guests: Adam Higginbotham – Author of “Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World’s Greatest Nuclear Disaster” Kate Brown – Historian of Environmental and Nuclear History at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and author of “Manual for Survival: A Chernobyl Guide for the Future” James Smith – Professor in the School of Earth & Environmental Sciences, University of Portsmouth, U.K. He was interviewed for and has written a review of "Manual for Survival" Ted Nordhaus – Founder and Executive Director of The Breakthrough Institute, Berkeley, California Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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0:51.0	Sign up for a one pound per month trial period at shopify.co dek slash special offer,
0:56.4	or lowercase. That's Shopify dot co-deekk slash special offer. In the late 1950s, the Soviets were trying to show the superiority of their economic
1:16.1	system by beating us into space, and they did, they launched Sputnik, but by 1969, well,
1:22.3	we had gotten to the moon first and that was the end of that.
1:24.5	But the Soviets were still ahead when it came to nuclear power.
1:28.5	And then in 1986, the Chernobyl nuclear plant blew up.
1:32.0	And that threw a real shadow not only over the
1:35.6	Soviet nuclear effort but also what the world was going to do with regard to that
1:39.7	technology thereafter. I'm Seth Shostak. I'm Molly Bentley. Welcome to Big Picture Science
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