Ablaze

On 26th April 1986 the nuclear reactor of the fourth unit of the V.I. Lenin power-station at Chernobyl exploded. It was a catastrophe of historic proportions - many millions suffered, and continued to suffer, from the consequences. To chronicle this disaster and its aftermath, Piers Paul Read interviewed the engineers and operators who were conducting the fateful test on the night of 25th April; he talked to the director of the power-station, serving a ten-year sentence for negligence; and he went to the hitherto top-secret institutes once run by Beria's Ministry for Medium Machine Building - the Kurchatov Institute, Moscow's Hospital No 6, and the once-closed city of Obninsk. In this account, Read takes advantage of the declassification of nuclear information in the former Soviet Union and the loosening of tongues that followed the failure of the coup in 1991. He also gained access to the trial transcripts, the protocol of the hitherto secret Medical Commission, and other confidential reports. The result is not only the story of the catastrophe, but also a parable about totalitarianism and its collapse.