Andrew Leatherbarrow - Chernobyl 01:23:40: The Incredible True Story of the Worlds Worst Nuclear Disaster

CHERNOBYL 01:23:40

Andrew Leatherbarrow

Published by Andrew Leatherbarrow

Copyright 2016 Andrew Leatherbarrow

All rights reserved.

Imagine personnel of a plane which is flying very high. Whilst flying they begin testing the plane, opening the doors of the plane, shutting off various systems... The facts show that even such a situation should have been foreseen by the designers.

Valeri Legasov,

USSR Delegation Leader, 25-29 August 1986, Vienna.

When I first began reading books about Chernobyl, I found them very difficult to follow. My first, Chernobyl Notebook by Grigoriy Medvedev, a Soviet nuclear power station inspector, while an excellent book, assumed a great deal of prior knowledge of nuclear systems and the translation was raw. Over time - and books - I grew more at-ease with the technology and terminology, but still felt a lingering concern that these books were just too difficult for the average person to jump into. The Chernobyl disaster is one of the most incredible and globally significant events of the last 100 years, yet so few people understand what happened.

This confusion partly arose because all information released during the five years following the accident was distorted to fit a chosen narrative that the power station staff were to blame. From there, bits and pieces of drip-fed information evolved into myths and legends, despite later clarification of many of the earlier inaccuracies. Every new book, documentary, newspaper and website told a slightly different version of the story, and contradictions are still common today. Not only that, but I couldnt find a single title that focused on the parts of the story I was most interested in. Most dedicate only a small section to the actual accident itself, choosing instead to focus on the aftermath. Those that do detail the actual event, such as Chernobyl Notebook, tend to ignore the aftermath entirely. Others become embroiled in politics, environmentalism or endless numbers. So, after looking for the sort of book I wanted to read and discovering that no such title existed, I decided to write one myself.

I do not want to sensationalise the accident. What happened is sensational in many ways, but the story is frequently exaggerated for the sake of adding drama. Its dishonest and unnecessary; the true events were dramatic enough. Nor have I set out to condemn or absolve anyone. I cant stand it when authors of non-fiction force their opinions on the reader, Im simply presenting the facts as I see them.

While I have made painstaking efforts to ensure that the details presented here are correct, certain aspects - mostly relating to the reactor - have been deliberately simplified to an extent, for the sake of keeping the story easy to follow. I have kept the number of characters and their specific stories to a minimum for the sake of brevity, concentrating on those whom I feel were most central to what took place. I also felt it was important to make this as relatable a story as possible, and hence have used a lot of quotes from people who were there. Over time, I have been forced to conclude that it will never be possible to create a 100% accurate account of what happened because of conflicting witness information, but I have gone far out of my way to ensure that this book is as truthful as it can be. Where Im unsure of something, I have noted it in the footnotes.

I wanted to include an account of my 2011 journey to Chernobyl that prompted my desire to study the disaster further. It was a most profound experience for me and changed my life completely. This second narrative, while clearly less enthralling than the historical account, breaks up the book and hopefully adds something to the overall package. I dont remember many of the finer points or conversations of this trip and didnt want to make up information to pad it out, so the lack of detail in some areas is a deliberate choice.

Its taken me four and a half years and thousands of hours of writing and research, entirely in my spare time, to reach this point. For the first two years or-so, I had no intention of releasing this as an actual book. I was writing it for myself as a hobby, to perhaps print one copy and put it on a shelf. As such, I made the amateur mistake of not keeping a record of my sources up until that point, so Ive had to go back and re-find a great deal of information when assembling the references. While working on the text, I made the entire thing available online for free and updated it over time as it grew longer and longer. It was only once I began receiving emails urging me to release it as a proper book that I started to entertain the notion. I set up a Kickstarter in an effort to raise funding for an editor in early 2015, but that fell flat on its face, at which point I abandoned the project entirely.

In April of the same year, I uploaded an album of 150 historic photographs of Chernobyl to Reddit in honour of the disasters 29th anniversary, complete with captions from my book. The reception was astonishing. People asked me to make the book available in its then-current state, and so for two days I did. Within an hour, I had the book uploaded to a print-on-demand website and in those two days I somehow sold over 700 copies. Me, a nobody with zero credentials. This proved to me that people were interested in the disaster.

Five weeks later my first baby boy, Noah, was born, and I left Chernobyl behind for a while. By September, I decided it was stupid to abandon the book when it was so close to completion. With no money to pay a professional, I found some editing software and edited it myself. The months off had given me time to see areas that needed some extra details and I had received a lot of invaluable feedback from the people of Reddit who bought my unedited book. I made changes accordingly and have no doubt that the final product is all the better for it. The book was finished in March 2016 after six sleep-deprived months (thanks Noah) of editing in my spare time. Then, amazingly, a young editor from Reddit found my work and offered to help for free. She has done a wonderful job racing through it during these final few weeks. Reddit has proven to be an invaluable help along the way. From nuclear engineers correcting my physics to college historians correcting my history to Russians correcting my translations, I really am indebted to the wonderful people from that website and cannot thank them enough.

I am no writer, certainly not in the traditional sense. I have had no training of any kind and had never written anything at all before attempting this project. My first drafts were awful and I have rewritten the entire thing more times than I want to remember, but over time I got (slightly) better at it. Im the first to admit that this is far from the best thing Ive ever read, but its as good as I can manage at the moment and I hope you enjoy it.

Finally, I would like to state for the record that I am in favour of nuclear power in developed nations, when strict health, safety and environmental considerations are adhered to.

Chapter 1

A BRIEF HISTORY OF NUCLEAR POWER

Radiation is perhaps the most misunderstood phenomenon known to humanity. Even today, now that its effects are well known, the word radiation still elicits a fearful overreaction in most people. During the euphoric decades of study following its discovery at the turn of the century, people held a more carefree attitude in their ignorance. Radiations most well-known pioneering researcher, Marie Curie, died in 1934 from aplastic anaemia brought on by her decades of unprotected exposure to the faint, glowing substances in her pockets and desk drawers. Together with her husband Pierre, she built upon German physicist Wilhelm R ntgens momentous 1895 discovery of X-rays, by working tirelessly out of, an abandoned shed which had been in service as a dissecting room of the School of Medicine, While researching the chemical element Uranium, the pair discovered and named new elements Thorium, Polonium and Radium, and spent significant time studying the effects of unusual waves radiating from all four. Marie dubbed these waves radiation and received the Nobel Prize for her work. Until this point in time, the atom was believed to be the absolute smallest thing in existence. It was accepted that atoms were whole, unbreakable, and by themselves formed the building blocks of the universe. Curies revelation that radiation is created when atoms split apart was groundbreaking.