Chernobyl Paperback – January 31, 2019

This brilliant historian has written a classic account of the Chernobyl disaster, the 20th century's most fearful nuclear news event. Serhii Ploky's book reads like a thriller, with detailed and informative knowledge of the former Soviet Union, the Ukraine, and the design flaws of the Russian RBMK reactor, which was rejected in the West, as well as the people and human errors that combined to create an explosive meltdown of Unit 4. Dr. Ploky's incredible book must be read in conjunction with the HBO/UK 5-part video series, which is now available as a multi-disc set at Netflix.

This account of the tragic incident that caused one of the greatest nuclear power plant meltdowns and consequences are still being told. This book gives a great comprehensive account of that time.

Book was well packaged and protected. Exactly as described, signed, first edition, great book and seller!

great detail and insight. I have done a ton of investigation into this devastating catastrophe but found new insight with this book. I recommend buying!

Good, balanced account without a lot of "politics." Background, event description and follow-up. In all, a very sad story, but one we must keep in mind.

Serhii Plokhy, Ukrainian by birth, is a Professor of History at Harvard University. One of his concerns in this book is to demonstrate the impact the disaster and its mishandled aftermath had in hastening the collapse of the Soviet Union and in strengthening the movement for Ukrainian independence. That is an aspect of the disaster still meriting investigation; the details and causes of the explosion, and chronology of the aftermath have long been authoritatively documented.In brief, reactor number 4, the newest, at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, exploded at 1.21am on the night of 26th April 1986, releasing radioactive material that would fall on significant areas of north-east Ukraine, south-east Belarus, and western Russia. Lesser quantities travelled further – over Scandinavia, where in Sweden evidence of an accident ‘somewhere in the Soviet bloc’ was first detected, and some was even precipitated with heavy rain over Wales.In the light of all that we know now, the explosion can be attributed to design faults in the reactor type used (exclusive to the Soviet Union); an experiment conducted during a routine maintenance shut-down that, in view of the potentially catastrophic consequences, should never have been attempted; a slowing-down of the shutdown process because of the demand for electricity when another power plant unexpectedly went off-line; inadequate knowledge, even among the designers, of how that type of reactor might respond when mishandled; and – in the interests of secrecy and state security – lack of instruction and knowledge among the on-site plant operators.That the reactor had not just overheated, but exploded, was not established by the Soviet authorities until mid-afternoon on April 26th. Even then, evacuation of the adjacent city of Pripyat, which protocol directed should have been organized immediately, was delayed for a further 24 hours, and it was only after the evacuation to surrounding districts of the city’s 44,000 people, and of patients with radiation sickness to Moscow hospitals – spreading news widely by word of mouth – that the authorities made any public announcement within the Soviet Union or to the wider world.The gradual opening-up of information over the months and years that followed became quite remarkable. It was in any case the Communist Party Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev’s era of glasnost (openness and transparency). Hans Blix, the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and his American nuclear security advisor were permitted to view the destruction from a helicopter less than two weeks after the explosion (even at risk of their observing a top secret radar array located close to the Chernobyl plant), and foreign journalists were permitted to travel to Kiev.For an international conference the following August on the causes of the disaster and ways of avoiding future accidents, the Politburo approved presentation of a 388 page report that included information on the design of the reactor, and estimates of the amount of radioactivity released and its impact on agriculture and human health.(There was, however, a blind-spot in the information presented: the ‘wrong’ people were blamed – and afterwards tried and given prison sentences: the plant managers and safety officers, rather than the reactor’s designers and high Communist Party officials.)The opening-up of information, hand-in-hand with perestroika (restructuring), developed alongside a new tolerance of demonstrations against all things nuclear, which in Ukraine was associated almost from the beginning with demands for independence. In late 1991, less than six years after the Chernobyl explosion, the Soviet Union collapsed and Ukraine achieved its longed-for independence.Plokhy provides a very full account of all those matters, and his presentation is, for the most part at least, fair and balanced – although some still-living actors such as Gorbachev would probably disagree.Plokhy's narrative is, however, not strong on how the world outside the Soviet Union (or even outside north-eastern Ukraine) was affected, or how other governments and the free-world’s press reacted. Elements such as the first detection of raised radiation levels in Sweden and the Soviet Union’s eventual cooperation with the IAEA are present, but are not brought together in a fuller account, as I thought they might have been

Well written, easy to read history book, with engaging personal stories that bring you into the moment.

Interesting, thoroughly researched and well-written—reads almost like a novel.