Kyle Greer’s Reviews > Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster > Status Update

The government coverups of past failings and underlying design flaws of RBMK reactors continued into the early 90’s, despite constant attempts from men like Valery Legasov and Anatoly Dyatlov to expose the truth. New Safe Confinement was completed in 2016 as a successor to the hastily constructed Sarcophagus. The idea being that the NSC would contain the radioactive corpse of the Chernobyl NPP for another 100 years

Despite it’s somewhat makeshift nature. The Chernobyl sarcophagus is perhaps one of the most impressive feats in modern civil engineering. Assembled away from the station and slid over top of reactor 4 in less than 8 months, a monumental achievement, even if it would need replaced by the New Safe Confinement in 2016.

Chapter 15: Details of both the criminal and technical investigations into the incident at Chernobyl NPP. The status of atomic titans of industry like Alexandrov was more or less unchecked amid talks of RBMK design flaws. Public blame was placed almost solely at the feet of plant operators and men like director Victor Bruhkanov.

Chapter 14: The liquidation efforts at the Chernobyl NPP and surrounding regions are truly a monumental human achievement. Knowing that the full military, economic, and academic weight of one of the world's superpowers was dispatched to Northern Ukraine and there was still doubts as to how to contain the situation really puts into context the severity of the accident.

Difficult reading about the patients of hospital number 6. Medical experts struggled to tend to the needs of the ~200 firefighters and engineers suffering from Acute Radiation Syndrome.

Chapter 9: Pripyat and its 51,000 citizens are finally evacuated. This is a monument our effort requiring 1,200+ buses, boats, and locomotives. The citizens were told this would be temporary.

The commission creates a chemical cocktail to dump on the burning corpse of reactor 4, with the intent to quench the fire.

Chapter 8: First real look at the disaster through the common man. Until now we had mostly followed nuclear plant workers, administrators, firefighters, etc.

In this chapter we finally start to see some humanity. Dozens of plant workers and firefighters admitted to Pripyat hospital, we see families worry for their loved ones. Administration of stable Iodine to citizens is first proactive step from administration.

Chapter 7: Introduction to Valery Legasov and the second task force

Ignorance and denial on display from those in charge of the disaster like Brukhanov and even Scherbina. The decision to not evacuate Pripyat is incredible.

Chapters 2-3: Excellent discussion and introduction to the RBMK reactors and the bureaucracy of the Soviet Union. Established a lot of things that will come into play when we look at the actual “why” behind reactor 4s explosion including but not limited to positive void coefficients, RBMK reactors and the AZ-5 key, Inefficient education and simulations for engineers in the USSR, exhaustion of staff, etc.