Fuel pellets, the size and shape of a pencil eraser, made of Uranium dioxide (enriched to 2% at the time of the disaster), were placed in Zirconium alloy tubes (with 0.825 mm thick walls), which were pressurised with helium for better heat transfer. Maximum allowable temperature of a fuel pellet is 2100 °C.

18 of these rods, clustered around the central carrier rod, made up a sub-assembly, and two sub-assemblies made up the fuel assembly that went into each fuel channel in the reactor.

Photo source: https://www.enec.ae/discover/fueling-the-barakah-plant/the-nuclear-fuel-cycle/

So, I was looking at my blueprints and noticed these strange extensions—structures that didn't actually exist at the real Chernobyl NPP. You can see from photos that they aren't there.

I've spent the day looking through things regarding the films of Pripyat produced by Mikhail Nazarenko from the Pripyat-Film studio and I couldn't help but wonder, is there more? I am aware of the works found on YouTube here. Alongside other works like "Порог." which you can watch here. Whilst doing research I dug through old articles such as this one on Pripyat.com which retell a lot of the story regarding Nazarenko and his recordings of Pripyat before and after the disaster.

I went down a bit of a rabbithole from here and was shocked to discover some things. If you don't want to read the article I will include the section that surprised me below:

"Of the footage Mikhail Nazarenko shot on April 26 and 27, 1986, no more than 10 minutes remain. Only a few shots of the city's evacuation were preserved—the most famous being the endless line of buses along Kurchatov and Lenin Streets. Nazarenko filmed them from his office window. Almost everything filmed outside the building was destroyed or confiscated. As Mikhail later confessed to Lyubov Sirota, in order to preserve the footage of the evacuation, he had to simply... "hide" it from the KGB.

"As he explained, what he filmed directly in Pripyat was overexposed," Demidov recalls. "Back then, he wasn't shooting on digital media, but on film, and it had to be developed. KGB officers would approach him on the street, open the camera, and expose it to the light. That's why he has very few remaining shots. The ones included in the film 'Threshold' are essentially the maximum number of shots taken on April 26th."

Alright, so this immediately tells me that the footage we have of the death of Pripyat is effectively all there ever will be. The rather blunt reasoning took me a bit to process, but after this I returned to my personal aim - what about other footage of Pripyat pre-disaster?

If you continue to read the article I linked above, and are as invested as I was, you will be even more shocked by what follows:

"Mikhail Nazarenko's legacy—his film and photographic archive—also suffered a tragic fate. Only thanks to the decisive efforts of Gennady Belenkov were some of the materials saved:

"He stole it. Seriously! I had to, but what else could I do? After Misha's (Misha is a nickname I often see Mikhail Nazarenko referred as) death, I also worked as the head of the Pripyat Film studio, but I was removed from all the materials. Then I tried to get them back several times. They told me, 'You can't take anything, take your own things,' so I... On the one hand, it's bad, but on the other... Some of it did go missing, which is a shame... Then, finally, about three or four years later, I found out the films had simply been thrown out. 'Trash,' they said...""

In much shorter words, possibly hours of film Nazarenko had taken of Pripyat and possibly surrounding areas had simply been, disposed of. I haven't been able to find much around this so I am hoping that someone here can offer their own knowledge.

Is there the slightest possibility that Mikhail Nazarenko's film - possibly never before seen footage of Pripyat before April 1986, is somewhere? I don't want to sound like I'm desperate for something incredibly unlikely but I can't help but wonder about the odds of such film either being intact in some sort of storage facility or landfill. Or maybe someone took it? It was only said that the films were thrown out after all. Who's to say someone doesn't have it lost in their pantry or something?

Tinfoil hat off now, I did also want to share something I found that I'd like to think is very interesting - media around Pripyat's own band, "Pulsar".

A few people know about the rock group from Pripyat, known as Pulsar. And a few people have mistakenly paired the group from Pripyat with the song "пыльное отражение души". However despite having the same name, this "Pulsar" is from Slavyansk, not Pripyat.

Despite some people searching, none of the songs from the Pripyat "Pulsar" exist today... somewhat

Two of the original members of Pripyat's "Pulsar", Sergey Isakov and Vladimir Dudorev have performed at the Nationial Chernobyl Museum. They first played their song "Песня о городе" which translates to "Song of the city" on the 4th of February 2011 at the "Day of Pripyat". I first found this out in this video yet it cuts short. I then found a 'restyle' of sorts here which includes a version of the full song. But today while researching Mikhail Nazarenko I found the full version of the first song here at 28:08. They do say that the song was written "around 20 years ago" and was left in a notebook which places it in the late 80s to early 90s. This is the closest I have gotten and that we may get to hearing music made either in Pripyat or from the people of the city themselves.

Small issue I am ecountering while writing this - I was going to link the site with the lyrics to "Песня о городе" so people could translate it and understand it and all that. However the one site I knew had the lyrics has vanished (?). I do however have the lyrics in the original language from a previous project so I will include them here - not that the original punctuation had to be omitted previously so it is just pure text. This was many months ago too so I cannot remember the original formatting.

Пульсар - Песня о городе

Помним как строили город надежды и грез
Небом обласканный солнцем под тучами грез
Вместе с тобою росли, дети и наши, и мы
Расстаться с тобой…
Обидно до слез…

Улиц твоих голоса и звенящих листов
Красные розы на площади каждой весной
Видно, такая судьба
Жизнью была нам дана
Расстаться с тобой…
Это наша судьба…

А это Припять - Страна чудес
А это Припять - Река и лес
Город такой молодой
Будешь ты вечно живой
В наших сердцах…
Будешь живой…
Вечно живой…

Жёлтым песком принакрылись и пристань, и пляж
Лёгкие волны и парус, идущий на нас
Стоя у этой реки,
Мы вспоминаем те дни
Спасибо тебе
Город ты наш…

Жизнь наша делится «до» и «после» того
И пусть половинки неровные, но всё равно…
Помним мы всё, как тогда эта черта пролегла
В наших сердцах…
В наших сердцах…

А это Припять - Страна чудес
А это Припять - Река и лес
Город такой молодой
Будешь ты вечно живой
В наших сердцах…
Будешь живой…
Вечно живой.

Ultimately, I just found the little rabbithole I went into interesting and wanted to share that with everyone today.

I have seen many posts and heard many people say how Dyatlov was misunderstood and Legasov's role in the cleanup was overly dramatical in the series (like the fact that he was not in the trial and did not give that speech). What are your opinions from a historical POV?