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

by Adam Higginbotham

At the same time, the civil defense reservists of Special Battalion 731 began work on removing the topsoil around the reactor by hand. Even as other troops moved through the high-radiation zone by armored personnel carrier, these men started work in the open wearing regular army uniforms, protected only by cotton petal respirators. They excavated the soil near the reactor walls with ordinary shovels and placed it in metal containers for transport and burial in the partially finished radioactive waste storage vaults under construction for the Fifth and Sixth Units. Their shifts lasted as little as fifteen minutes, but the weather was hot and the radiation relentless. Their throats itched, they felt dizzy, and there was never enough water to drink. Some men suffered nosebleeds, while others began vomiting. Called to help clear chunks of reactor graphite lying on the ground near Unit Three, a detachment of chemical warfare troops arrived in a truck and began to pick them up using their hands.