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 safety.
