The definitive, dramatic untold story of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster, based on original reporting and new archival research.
When Reactor Number Four of the Chernobyl Atomic Energy Station exploded, triggering the world's worst nuclear disaster, tens of millions of people as far as mainland Europe feared deadly contamination. Over the last thirty years, this singular industrial accident has lodged itself in the collective nightmares of the world, a symbol of progress gone mad, the costs and consequences of which remain unclear even today. Chernobyl was and has remained shorthand for the spectral horrors of radiation poisoning, for a dangerous technology slipping its leash, for ecological fragility, and for what can happen when a dishonest and careless state endangers its citizens and the entire world. The real story of the events of April 26, 1986, clouded by the secrecy and deliberate confusion created by a Soviet state that excelled in propaganda, remain…
