The disputes began almost at once, with the completion of the commission’s preliminary report on the causes of the disaster, just ten days after the explosion, on May 5. Overseen by Meshkov, Slavsky’s deputy at the Ministry of Medium Machine Building, it unsurprisingly laid the blame for the accident on the operators: they had disabled key safety systems, flouted the regulations, and conducted the test without consulting with the reactor designers; Senior Reactor Control Operator Leonid Toptunov had pressed the AZ-5 button in a desperate and futile bid to stop the accident after it had begun,
...more
