The doctors regarded the survival of some of the most badly exposed operators as almost miraculous. One electrical engineer, Andrei Tormozin, had been only 120 meters from the reactor when it exploded, and then spent hours in highly radioactive areas of the machine hall, working to stop feed pumps and extinguish oil fires. He had absorbed what Guskova and the other specialists had always understood to be a mortal dose of gamma and beta radiation: almost 1,000 rem. His body rejected a bone marrow transplant; he contracted blood poisoning and radiation-induced hepatitis and was not expected to
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