I've watched a lot of things about Chernobyl but just 8 minutes in and I'm hooked enough to watch the whole thing. The speaker and the slides are engaging.
Yes, sort of. He mentions prompt criticality and then says "this was an explosion caused by nuclear things" https://youtu.be/YRPuO1RhbKo?t=2325
It sounds to me that as a nuclear industry professional he's avoiding committing specifically to that scenario, but mentioning "prompt criticality" puts him pretty close.
Yah. Seen it meanwhile. Was OK AFAICT. But... almost nobody dares to touch diverting from the official consensus of what exactly happened and how it happened. There are a few other people coming to different conclusions. One is https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sebastian_Pflugbeil who went into it, in person, as one of very few people. He gave many interviews, and about 2002 there was a documentary in german public television about it.
Anyways, his conclusions are based on the observations of other russian people who analyzed this in all possible ways, also in person, comparing floor plans and construction documents with what remained there. Based on that the story as it is commonly told, also in that HBO series can't be true. Especially not the amount of remaining radioactive material, and also not the nature of the initial reaction.
But since it's all in russian, and only some of that brought by Pflugbeil into german, it remains mostly in 'conspiracy theorist' territory.
I don't think it is.
I'm also aware that this is a 'speciality' of the RBMK design, so very unlikely or even impossible with other designs.
