Meltdown
Adam Higginbotham’s account of the
meltdown of RBMK Reactor #4 at Chernobyl and its aftermath for the most part
reads like fast-paced thriller that keeps wanting you to turn the next page.
Using secondary sources and direct interviews over a period of decade with many
of the principals involved, the author gets you into the heads of the decision
makers and the thought process that led to the meltdown and the subsequent
cover-up.
On April 25th 1986 a failed
safety test triggered the meltdown of Reactor #4. Radiation immediately spewed
into the surrounding town of Pripyat, which was built to support the Chernobyl
reactor complex. As an aside some of the heaviest fighting during World War II
took place in the nearby Pripyat marshes. All of the staff at the nuclear power
station lived in the town with their families. It took several days before an
evacuation order was given and in nearby Kiev the planned outdoor celebration
of May Day took place as radiation from the failed reactor rained down on the
residents.
Higginbotham takes you very deep into
the nuclear science of atomic reactors and the nature of the radiation that was
leaked during and after the meltdown. At points this is heavy going, but I believe
it is necessary to tell the story. Because the real story was not so much the
meltdown, but the associated radiation. He tells a riveting tale of the Russian
helicopter pilots dropping sand and boron into the reactor to cool it. The
pilots were at enormous personal risk and in the end their brave efforts did
little to cool the reactor.
The author also takes you into Moscow
Hospital #6 where many of the radiation sickness patients were treated and he
follows their treatment protocols. Of course most of them die, but there were
several survivors that he interviewed at length.
Of course Higginbotham saves his wrath,
not for the power plant operators who were put on trial for the reactor failure,
but rather for the entire Soviet system that allowed inherently unsafe reactors
to be put online in the first place. Simply put a major nuclear accident at an
RMKB reactor was inevitable because of inherent design flaws and the faulty
construction that was endemic. The Soviet system both before and during the
Stagnation Period under Brezhnev could not admit failure. Both the political
and scientific bureaucracies were ossified and defensive. And by the time
Gorbachev arrived in 1985 the Russian people had little faith in the system.
Thus as the full horror of Chernobyl
became known it became obvious that the Soviet government cared little for its
citizenry and if you like you can draw a straight line from Chernobyl to the
dissolution of the Soviet Union. But I
end on a word of caution; we here in the U.S. are not exempt from cover-ups. I
will only cite the deception given by New York City officials that the post
9/11 air quality south of Canal Street was safe to breathe. It wasn’t.
The full Amazon review appears at: https://www.amazon.com/review/R3CIWZBWEGVHF7/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv
Great review.
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