But over at Soyuzatomenergo, Georgi Kopchinsky and the other nuclear experts had already grasped that the reality might be far worse than anyone imagined. When they reached a shift supervisor at the station by phone, he had sounded incoherent and on the edge of panic. The agency’s director instructed him to find someone from the station’s senior management and tell them to phone Soyuzatomenergo immediately. Chernobyl’s deputy chief engineer for science was the first to call back. He calmly explained what he knew: Unit Four had been taken off-line for routine maintenance, and some kind of
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