By the time the light failed on Tuesday night, Antoshkin’s helicopter crews had dropped another 190 tonnes of sand and clay inside the walls of Unit Four. But the fire blazed on, and radionuclides continued to pour from the wreckage of the reactor. A scientific report revealed to the Party in Kiev that levels of background radiation in the Ukrainian cities of Rovno and Zhitomir, more than a hundred kilometers to the west and southwest of the plant, respectively, had already increased almost twentyfold. The regional civil defense leaders had made preparations for evacuating the settlements
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