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

by Adam Higginbotham

The Kremlin’s chief scientists on radiation medicine and meteorology—Leonid Ilyin and Yuri Izrael—refused to provide a definitive answer about the long-term effect of the spreading contamination. Summoned from Chernobyl to an urgent meeting with the Ukrainian government task force, the experts said that the reactor had been covered and radioactive emissions steeply reduced; soon they would cease altogether. They insisted that current radiation levels didn’t warrant an evacuation and recommended merely that the republic take further steps to keep the population informed of the ongoing measures to manage the crisis. But the Ukrainian leaders suspected that—whatever their true beliefs—Ilyin and Izrael also didn’t want to take responsibility for endorsing an evacuation. So, in a special late-night session of the Ukrainian Politburo, Vladimir Scherbitsky ordered the two scientists to draw up a written and signed statement of their opinion. He then locked the document in his office safe and disregarded their advice.