Boris Prushinsky—chief engineer of Soyuzatomenergo, the Ministry of Energy’s Department of Nuclear Power, and head of OPAS, the emergency response team recently created to respond to accidents at atomic stations—was at home in bed when he was woken by a call from the duty operator. She told him there had been an accident in Unit Four at the Chernobyl power plant. Then she read aloud the code signal used to signify its severity: Odin, dva, tri, chetyre. “One, two, three, four.” Prushinsky, barely conscious, struggled to recall what the numbers meant: A localized or general accident? A fire?
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