At the top, the experienced team of independent-minded nuclear engineering experts who had overseen the start-up of the station’s first four reactors had all left, and senior specialists were in short supply. The chief engineer—Brukhanov’s principal deputy, responsible for the day-to-day technical operation of the station—was Nikolai Fomin, the former plant Party secretary and an arrogant, blustering apparatchik of the old school. Balding, barrel chested, with a dazzling smile and a confident baritone voice that rose steeply in pitch when he became excited, Fomin had all the overbearing Soviet
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