26th April 1986. Chernobyl nuclear power plant, Ukraine. Reactor number 4 explodes. It’s the world’s worst nuclear disaster.
This gripping, thoroughly researched and well-written book is a must-read if you want to learn more about what happened at Chernobyl. The author pieces together the events which led up to the accident and gives a detailed account of the first few days. Various people are focused on, the parts they played (willingly or otherwise) in the story but also their characters and backgrounds. The political context is a major theme of the book, explaining the Soviet culture of cover-ups and cutting corners in the government’s desire to uphold their status and churn out the propaganda at the expense of their own people’s safety. For me, this was the most shocking aspect. Potential problems with that type of reactor had been flagged but for various reasons not acted upon. Even when the explosion had occurred and the firefighters were sent to the scene (unprotected from the deadly radiation), officials were not admitting that it was a nuclear accident. It took an extraordinary length of time for the citizens of Pripyat (the nearby city) to be warned and evacuated, and longer for the USSR to confirm to other countries that a radioactive disaster had occurred. Meanwhile, many Soviets were basically being sacrificed in the chaotic clean-up job. There’s a lot more I could say about this very informative book, but it’s best if you read it…
The science behind nuclear power, the operation of the power plant and the reasoning behind the clean-up methods were explained well. I don’t have a scientific background and I was able to understand it. There is a very human side to the book – after all, the accident was the result of human errors in design, operation and politics – and an epilogue in which we find out what happened to the characters we followed during the events. It’s also very scary, because Chernobyl wasn’t long ago and there’s the possibility of something like that happening again. I would caution against reading it just before you go to sleep…
First published in February 2019.
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