Overseen by Meshkov, Slavsky’s deputy at the Ministry of Medium Machine Building, it unsurprisingly laid the blame for the accident on the operators: they had disabled key safety systems, flouted the regulations, and conducted the test without consulting with the reactor designers; Senior Reactor Control Operator Leonid Toptunov had pressed the AZ-5 button in a desperate and futile bid to stop the accident after it had begun, triggered as a result of his and his colleagues’ simple incompetence. Toptunov and Shift Foreman Alexander Akimov were unlikely to contest this version of events: both
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