and uncomfortable. Everyone was nervous. Gorbachev asked simply, “What happened?” Vladimir Dolgikh, the Central Committee secretary in charge of the Soviet energy sector, began by explaining what he knew from his telephone conversations with Scherbina and the experts in Pripyat. He described an explosion, the destruction of the reactor, and the evacuation of the city. The air force was using helicopters to bury the ruined unit in sand, clay, and lead. A cloud of radiation was moving south and west and had already been detected in Lithuania. Information was still scant and conflicting: the
...more
