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

by Adam Higginbotham

On Saturday, after instruments at the Kiev Institute of Botany registered a sharp increase in radiation, KGB officers arrived and sealed the devices “to avoid panic and the spreading of provocative rumors.”

Finally, at 8:00 p.m. on Monday, April 28, almost three days after the toxic cloud first rolled into the night sky above Unit Four, Radio Moscow broadcast the TASS statement agreed upon in Gorbachev’s office. “An accident has taken place at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant,” the announcer read. “One of the atomic reactors has been damaged. Measures are being taken to eliminate the consequences of the accident. Aid is being given to those affected. A government commission has been set up.” In its brevity and frugality with the truth, the bulletin was typical of Soviet news reports, a continuation of the way the state had covered conventional industrial accidents for decades. An hour later, Radio Moscow’s World Service repeated the announcement in English, for foreign listeners, and followed it by cataloging the long record of nuclear accidents in the West. Both statements avoided mentioning when, exactly, the Ukrainian accident might have taken place.