Chernobyl, the HBO miniseries: Fact and fiction (Part II)
Several considerations arose immediately after the accident, including whether to evacuate people living in Pripyat, a purpose-built city (atomic city) only four kilometers from the NPF and how to deal with injured emergency response personnel. Readers may wonder why there was a city of almost 50,000 people near a NPF.The answer lies in the poor infrastructure of the Soviet Union. In the U.S. and Europe, there is no need to build a city near a NPF, because it is easy and efficient to transport workers and materials to the site over considerable distances. This was not so in the Soviet Union, such that planners built a new city near each of nine NPFs where workers could live and materials needed for plant repairs could be fabricated
Book, 2019