On Wednesday, April 30—the eve of the annual May Day celebrations, which would fill the streets of towns and cities throughout the USSR with parades and rallies—the wind blowing over the Chernobyl plant shifted once more. This time it turned almost due south, carrying energetic alpha and beta contamination directly toward Kiev, along with dangerously high levels of gamma radiation, in the form of iodine 131—the radioisotope that concentrates dangerously in the thyroid gland, particularly in children. At exactly one o’clock that afternoon, radiation levels on the streets of the city began to
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