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

by Adam Higginbotham

sometime before midnight, a functionary interrupted a meeting to tell Scherbina that General Secretary Gorbachev would be calling him shortly for a situation report. The deputy minister ordered the room cleared. As Sklyarov rose to leave, Scherbina stopped him. “No, no. Sit down,” he said. “Listen to what I’m going to say. Then you’re going to tell your superiors exactly the same thing.” The VCh—the scrambled high-frequency line, from Moscow—rang, and Scherbina answered. “There’s been an accident,” the deputy minister told Gorbachev. “Panic is total. Neither the Party organs, the secretary of the oblast, nor the rayon committees are here at present. I’m going to demand that the minister of energy restart all units. We’re going to take all measures to liquidate the accident.” Scherbina was silent for a few moments as Gorbachev spoke. At last, Scherbina said, “Okay,” and replaced the receiver in its cradle. He turned to Sklyarov. “Did you hear all that?” He had; he was appalled. “You can’t restore the reactor, because there is no reactor,” he said. “It no longer exists.” “You’re a panicker.” “I’ve seen it with my own eyes.” A few minutes later, the special telephone rang again. This time it was Scherbitsky, the Ukrainian Communist Party chief. Scherbina repeated to Scherbitsky what he’d just told Gorbachev: a can-do shock-work action plan of fantasy and denial. Then he handed the phone to Sklyarov. “He wants to talk to you. Just say what I was saying.” “I don’t agree with wh...