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

by Adam Higginbotham

So when the bus finally approached the fork in the road separating the city from the nuclear plant, and Prushinsky saw a militsia officer wearing a lepestok mask with his summer uniform, he was puzzled. The lepestok, or “petal,” was a Soviet-designed cloth respirator, which filtered radioactive aerosols from the atmosphere, and he couldn’t imagine why it might be necessary. But when the team reached Pripyat, someone from the plant was there to meet them and assured him that everything was under control. Relieved, Prushinsky checked into Hotel Polesia, an eight-story concrete building overlooking the central square, and went to lunch in the restaurant downstairs. Afterward, he ambled out onto the sunny hotel terrace and saw Director Brukhanov crossing the plaza toward him. “What’s the problem with the unit?” Prushinsky asked. Although the shell-shocked director would later continue to give his superiors contradictory information—and for several more hours tell others that Reactor Number Four remained intact—at this moment, Brukhanov acknowledged the truth.