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A rigorously research but above all very moving account of the Chernobyl disaster

When on 28 April 1986 an alarm kept going off in a Swedish power plant it was the first sign that something was seriously wrong. All signs were pointing to Russia, but initially Russia flatly denied that something very bad had happened. After a few days, when more and more radioactivity was detected, Russia could not keep its secret anymore: there had been an incident at the nuclear power plant near Chernobyl, in the Ukraine.

Serhii Plokhy’s account is the first comprehensive history from the explosion to the closing of the plant in December 2000. The first thing I noticed is that he - despite all the nuclear science - never loses sight of the human picture, or tragedy that occurred,

A human tragedy it ws. I was haunted by the story of the plant’s director, who was the ultimate scapegoat. Although he did bore some responsibility, he was in effect used to distract the attention to the deeper causes of the accident: the fact that there were some serious design flaws in the type of nuclear reactor used in Chernobyl.

The real heroes of the story were the firemen, who were sent onto the roof of the reactor building, kicking off highly radioactive graphite along the way. Already after a few hours, they were showing the signs of acute radio active poisoning.

In the meantime, the Soviet authorities tried to keep the matter under the lid. After a long delay, they finally agreed to the evacuation of the people and did not even try to prevent the May parades in Kiev even though they knew there was a risk of radiation.

In the end, the seeds of the Soviet collapse were sown in Chernobyl, as the ecologic disaster was quickly turned into a debate about independence. The rest is history.

And Chernobyl? It is estimated that a further 4,000 - 90,000 will have died of radiation causes since. The area surrounding the reactor will not be safe for human habitation for at least another 20,000 years.