I do not deny for any reason that mechanical errors played a major role in the disaster, but I still struggle to fully understand how nuclear power works and some aspects of nuclear physics that I will never fully understand. While this nuclear disaster that affected the world's population is a mixture of human and mechanical errors, I think I prefer to focus more on the human ones. It is worth mentioning that I had to look for extra information about certain people, places, accidents, events and elements that I did not know until today, but that helped me to have a better understanding of what really happened in the nuclear plant and how an RBMK reactor works, or at least those that had been built at that time and were in operation.Ĭertain things really caught my attention, and mainly it was the brutal honesty with which the author of the book criticized the way in which real and relevant data was covered up and lied to a population that had no idea of what was going on also the cheap way in which the Soviet government dealt with the situation and the few funds they actually invested in the construction of the RBMK reactors, despite knowing the technical failures they suffered from. How this has affected millions of people and led them to death or made them suffer from chronic diseases such as cancer, malformations and congenital diseases that are not always external.Īs someone who has a deep passion and zeal for history and for the various universal historical events that have had a great impact on humanity, I could not pass up the opportunity to read this book. Although it also mentions more nuclear disasters and background to nuclear power plants: weapons and how they decided to use radium, uranium and plutonium to turn them into weapons and death. This book explains how a nuclear reactor works, its components. The HBO series also helped to get a little more perspective on the subject. However, this last topic (with several more) I will cover in the review of the other book I read accompanying this one. Here is a collection of pictures taken by the author that can help to have a perspective of how's Chernobyl these days.Ĭhernobyl is an event that caught my attention a lot back in 2017 and I started to research in depth about various aspects of the subject: how a damn nuclear reactor works (I had no idea how exactly nuclear physics works, and I still have some problems), what kind of mistakes (both mechanical and human) led to the catastrophe, how this impacted the people who were on duty at the nuclear power plant at that time, the firefighters, the people who were evacuated, the doctors and nurses attending people, the people in charge, and above all, the earth itself. “Those whose bodies were recovered are buried in welded zinc coffins, to prevent their radioactive remains from contaminating the soil.” Complete with over 45 pages of photographs of modern-day Pripyat and technical diagrams of the power station, Chernobyl 01:23:40 is a fascinating new account of the world’s worst nuclear disaster. The historical narrative is interwoven with a story of the author’s own spontaneous journey to Ukraine’s still-abandoned city of Pripyat and the wider Chernobyl Zone. From the desperate fight to prevent a burning reactor core from irradiating eastern Europe, to the self-sacrifice of the heroic men who entered fields of radiation so strong that machines wouldn’t work, to the surprising truth about the legendary ‘Chernobyl divers’, all the way through to the USSR’s final show-trial. This book, the result of five years of research, presents an accessible but comprehensive account of what really happened. The event spawned decades of conflicting, exaggerated and inaccurate stories. It was an act that forced the permanent evacuation of a city, killed thousands and crippled the Soviet Union. At 01:23:40 on April 26th 1986, Alexander Akimov pressed the emergency shutdown button at Chernobyl’s fourth nuclear reactor.
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