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

by Adam Higginbotham

On his arrival in Kiev, Viktor Brukhanov was taken to the Leningrad Hotel and summoned the next morning to give a statement in the offices of the public prosecutor. The investigator gave him a list of questions, and Brukhanov wrote out his answers by hand. The statement eventually filled ninety pages, and when it was finished, he was driven back to the Fairy Tale Pioneer camp. On the evening of Saturday, July 19, the official version of the Politburo’s verdict was announced on Vremya. It was unequivocal and damning. Through the findings of the government commission, the anchor said, “it was established that the accident had been caused by a series of gross breaches of the operational regulations of the reactor by workers at the atomic power station. . . . Irresponsibility, negligence, and indiscipline led to grave consequences.” The statement included a list of the ministers who had been dismissed and concluded with the news that Brukhanov had been expelled from the Party. The Prosecutor General’s Office of the USSR had launched an investigation, and court proceedings would follow. There was no mention of any design faults in the reactor.