Higginbotham - Midnight in Chernobyl: the untold story of the worlds greatest nuclear disaster

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For Vanessa

This book is a work of history. Belarusian, Russian, and Ukrainian words have been spelled in accordance with the Library of Congress transliteration system and occasionally simplified further to make them as readable as possible in English. The names of places and people, and the units of measurement, are those commonly used in the Soviet Union at the time the events took place.

The Chernobyl Atomic Energy Station and the City of Pripyat

MANAGEMENT

Viktor Brukhanov plant director

Nikolai Fomin chief engineer; deputy to the plant director

Anatoly Dyatlov deputy chief engineer for operations

STAFF

Alexander Akimov foreman, fifth shift of reactor Unit Four

Leonid Toptunov senior reactor control engineer, fifth shift, Unit Four

Boris Stolyarchuk senior unit control engineer, fifth shift, Unit Four

Yuri Tregub senior reactor control engineer, Unit Four

Alexander Yuvchenko senior mechanical engineer, fifth shift, Unit Four

Valery Perevozchenko reactor shop shift foreman, fifth shift, Unit Four

Serafim Vorobyev head of plant civil defense

Veniamin Prianichnikov head of training in plant nuclear safety

FIREFIGHTERS

Major Leonid Telyatnikov chief of Paramilitary Fire Station Number Two (Chernobyl plant)

Lieutenant Vladimir Pravik head of third watch, Paramilitary Fire Station Number Two (Chernobyl plant)

Lieutenant Piotr Khmel head of first watch, Paramilitary Fire Station Number Two (Chernobyl plant)

Lieutenant Viktor Kibenok head of third watch, Paramilitary Fire Station Number Six (Pripyat)

Sergeant Vasily Ignatenko member of third watch, Paramilitary Fire Station Number Six (Pripyat)

PRIPYAT

Alexander Esaulov deputy chairman of the Pripyat ispolkom , or city council; the deputy mayor

Maria Protsenko chief architect for the city of Pripyat

Natalia Yuvchenko teacher of Russian language and literature at School Number Four, and wife of Alexander Yuvchenko

The Government

Mikhail Gorbachev General secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union; leader of the USSR

Nikolai Ryzhkov chairman of the Soviet Council of Ministers; prime minister of the USSR

Yegor Ligachev chief of ideology for the Communist Party of the Soviet Union; the second most powerful figure in the Politburo

Viktor Chebrikov chairman of the Committee for State Security (KGB) of the USSR

Vladimir Dolgikh secretary of the Communist Party Central Committee with responsibility for heavy industry, including nuclear power

Vladimir Marin head of the nuclear power sector of the Heavy Industry and Energy Division of the Communist Party Central Committee

Anatoly Mayorets Soviet minister of energy and electrification

Gennadi Shasharin deputy Soviet minister of energy, with specific responsibility for nuclear energy

Vladimir Scherbitsky first secretary of the Communist Party of Ukraine and member of the Soviet Politburo; leader of the Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine

Alexander Lyashko chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine; the Ukrainian prime minister

Vladimir Malomuzh second secretary of the Kiev Oblast Communist Party

Vitali Sklyarov Ukrainian minister of energy and electrification

Boris Scherbina deputy chairman of the Soviet Council of Ministers; first chairman of the government commission in Chernobyl

Ivan Silayev deputy chairman of the Soviet Council of Ministers, responsible for the engineering industry; member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the USSR; second chairman of the government commission in Chernobyl

The Nuclear Experts

Anatoly Aleksandrov chairman of the Soviet Academy of Sciences and director of the Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy, responsible for the development of nuclear science and technology throughout the USSR

Efim Slavsky minister of medium machine building, in control of all aspects of the Soviet nuclear weapons program

Nikolai Dollezhal director of NIKIET, the Soviet reactor design agency

Valery Legasov first deputy director of the Kurchatov Institute, the immediate deputy to Anatoly Aleksandrov

Evgeny Velikhov deputy director of the Kurchatov Institute; scientific advisor to Mikhail Gorbachev and rival to Valery Legasov

Alexander Meshkov deputy minister of the Ministry of Medium Machine Building

Boris Prushinsky chief engineer of Soyuzatomenergo, the Ministry of Energys department of nuclear power; leader of OPAS, the ministrys emergency response team for accidents at nuclear power stations

Alexander Borovoi head of the neutrino laboratory at the Kurchatov Institute and scientific leader of the Chernobyl Complex Expedition

Hans Blix director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, based in Vienna, Austria

The Generals

General Boris Ivanov deputy chief of the general staff of the USSRs Civil Defense Forces

General Vladimir Pikalov commander of the Soviet army chemical troops

Major General Nikolai Antoshkin chief of staff of the Seventeenth Airborne Army, Kiev military district

Major General Nikolai Tarakanov deputy commander of the USSRs Civil Defense Forces

The Doctors

Dr. Angelina Guskova head of the clinical department of Hospital Number Six, Moscow

Dr. Alexander Baranov head of hematology, Hospital Number Six, Moscow

Dr. Robert Gale hematology specialist at UCLA Medical Center, Los Angeles

SATURDAY, APRIL 26, 1986: 4:16 P.M.

CHERNOBYL ATOMIC ENERGY STATION, UKRAINE

S enior Lieutenant Alexander Logachev loved radiation the way other men loved their wives. Tall and good-looking, twenty-six years old, with close-cropped dark hair and ice-blue eyes, Logachev had joined the Soviet army when he was still a boy. They had trained him well. The instructors from the military academy outside Moscow taught him with lethal poisons and unshielded radiation. He traveled to the testing grounds of Semipalatinsk in Kazakhstan, and to the desolate East Urals Trace, where the fallout from a clandestine radioactive accident still poisoned the landscape; eventually, Logachevs training took him even to the remote and forbidden islands of Novaya Zemlya, high in the Arctic Circle and ground zero for the detonation of the terrible Tsar Bomba , the largest thermonuclear device in history.