Chernobyl

March 15, 2018
A history of the nuclear disaster that set precedents--and standards--for future mishaps of the kind.As Plokhy (Director, Ukrainian Research Institute, Harvard Univ.; Lost Kingdom: The Quest for Empire and the Making of the Russian Nation, 2017, etc.) writes, the Ukrainian city of Prypiat and the entire "exclusion zone" created after the meltdown of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor on April 26, 1986, stand as a kind of living museum, a time capsule enshrining the communist era. In 2015, the Ukrainian government removed statues of Lenin and other communist leaders from the streets, but "the monument to Lenin still stands in the center of Chernobyl." In other respects, Chernobyl requires a more forward-looking approach; when the plant's core melted down, an army of engineers, laborers, soldiers, police officers, and specialists had to evacuate thousands of people and attempt to isolate the power plant. They did so by dropping thousands of tons of sand, digging diversion tunnels and dams, encasing structures in concrete, and, in the end, abandoning a huge swath of land to an irradiated nature. The immediate cause of the accident, Plokhy notes, was a scheduled test that went awry, but proximate causes included cost-cutting construction shortcuts and an overly ambitious production schedule that forced the machinery into failure-prone overextension. In older times, the event might have been buried away, though atmospheric monitors would have detected it beyond the Iron Curtain. But the Chernobyl disaster occurred during the rule of Mikhail Gorbachev during the time of perestroika, and Soviet scientists were able to take the advice of Western scientists, one of whom suggested "that children be given potassium iodide tablets" in the hope of containing radiation poisoning. The author concludes that even in the wake of Chernobyl, we have not gotten much better at containing meltdowns--consider Fukushima, still poisoning the Pacific--and need to cooperate to "strengthen international control over the construction and exploitation of nuclear power stations."A thoughtful study of catastrophe, unintended consequences, and, likely, nuclear calamities to come.

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May 15, 2018

From the birth of the Soviet nuclear industry to a detailed analysis of the dramatic events of April 26, 1986, Plokhy (history, Harvard Univ.; The Gates of Europe) provides the most comprehensive exploration of the events that led to the Chernobyl disaster. The engrossing narrative covers how past Soviet nuclear accidents guided the response--and denial--of the explosion at Reactor 4 and significantly impacted the future of the now-abandoned town of Pripyat, the surrounding regions, and ultimately the Soviet Union. Plokhy also details the lasting effects the catastrophe are predicted to have on the residents and ecosystems of Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia for more than 20,000 years. A cautionary closing explores the continued operation of the power plant for years afterward and reveals how easily another tragedy could occur at nuclear facilities around the world. VERDICT A comprehensive overview of the Chernobyl disaster, with enough scientific inquiry to present nuclear topics without getting bogged down in details and jargon. Readers will appreciate the breadth of coverage of this nuclear and Soviet history, from environmentalists to interested general audiences.--Zebulin Evelhoch, Central Washington Univ. Lib., Ellensburg

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from June 25, 2018
An artful storyteller, Plokhy (Lost Kingdom), director of Harvard’s Ukrainian Research Institute, melds Kremlin politics, nuclear physics, and human frailty into this spellbinding account of the 1986 explosion and fire at Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station in Ukraine, which Soviet officials tried to deny and then attempted to downplay the extent of. Plokhy expertly guides readers through the Soviet military-industrial complex, exposing the rivalries and clashes among Communist Party bosses, government ministries, the KGB, and central planners whose “unrealistic demands” and “impossible deadlines” precipitated the disaster. The meltdown occurred during a holiday connected to Lenin’s birthday; Plokhy, with a Gogolian sense of irony, captures the air of celebration as radiation levels climb to hundreds of times above normal and the threat of a second explosion looms. Officials denied what was happening, the KGB cut telephone lines to keep news of the disaster from spreading, and the deaths of firefighters exposed to lethal doses of radiation in the months following the explosion were kept secret. Plokhy, who shares the opinion of many historians that Chernobyl’s meltdown was the beginning of the end of the Soviet Union, documents the catastrophe and its effects on reemerging Ukrainian and Russian nationalism in this probing and sensitive investigative history.