Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster

by Adam Higginbotham

But after a quarter century, the collective memory of the world’s most devastating atomic accident had dimmed and softened. In the harsh light of climbing oil costs and global warming, governments were reconsidering the viability of nuclear power. The first contract to build a new nuclear power plant in the United States in more than thirty years was already under way. At the beginning of March 2011, Ukraine announced plans to begin construction of two new reactors not far from Chernobyl. The government in Kiev was still plotting the future of the forbidden zone when, on March 11, 2011, the news came in from the Tokyo Electric Power Company’s nuclear plant in Fukushima, Japan. The disaster involving the three General Electric–built reactors on the northeastern coast of Honshu followed a now familiar course, this time played out live on television: a loss of coolant led to reactor meltdown, a dangerous buildup of hydrogen gas, and several catastrophic explosions. No one was killed or injured by the immediate release of radiation, but three hundred thousand people were evacuated from the surrounding area, which will remain contaminated for decades to come.