The following afternoon, in an interview broadcast on Soviet Central Television, the head of the government commission, Ivan Silayev, outlined plans for the reactor’s final resting place: a tomb in which the ruins of Unit Four would be interred forever. It would be “a huge container,” he explained, “which will enable us to secure the burial of everything that remains . . . of this entire accident.” The resulting structure would be monumental, built on a scale to last a hundred years or more, and, before the cameras, Silayev gave it a name resonant with history and ritual: sarkofag.
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