The batiskaf—bathyscaphe—was a twenty-tonne lead cabin, with a single porthole of leaded glass thirty centimeters thick, which dangled on a five-meter cable from the hook of a Demag crane. With enough space inside to accommodate four men, the bathyscaphe, lifted a hundred meters in the air, could be “flown” by crane over Unit Four and allowed the engineers to descend into even the most radioactive areas of the site in relative
