Midnight In Chernobyl: The Untold Story Of The World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster Quotes
"Let the atom be a worker, not a soldier!"
"Hai bude atom robitnikom, a ne soldatom!" ("Let the atom be a worker, not a soldier!" in Ukrainian)
"At the dawn of the 1970s, in a bid to meet its surging need for electricity and to catch up with the West, the USSR embarked upon a crash program of reactor building."
"But when the windows of the Palace of Culture were hung with hand-painted portraits of state and Party leaders, the director was hailed for his illustrious achievements."
"He had met his targets and fulfilled the plan and won himself and his men orders of merit and pay bonuses for beating deadlines and exceeding labor quotas."
"The USSR’s economic utopianism did not recognize the existence of unemployment, and overstaffing and absenteeism were chronic problems."
"The very names of Sredmash facilities were classified, and sites that ranged in size from individual institutes in Moscow and Leningrad to entire cities were known by the men and women who worked there as pochtovye yashchiki—'post office boxes.'"
"He was due back at the plant again in just a few hours for another shift. Natalia realized how exhausted he must be, and the thought made her uneasy."
"But he wanted company and asked Natalia to join him. She left the TV, and they spent the next few minutes talking about nothing much until, finally, it was time for him to go."
"But the Ministry granted him an exception, and the bitumen remained."
"Korol and Toptunov both had science in their blood."
"Gagarin’s massive Vostok 1 rocket thundered off the launchpad...Toptunov, just seven months old, was there to witness its blazing exhaust plume vanish into the stratosphere."
"Leonid had no interest in life in a Baltic backwater. At seventeen, he left home to join the cult of the atomshchiki—the disciples of the peaceful atom."
"To excel, the students had to pass courses in historical materialism and 'scientific Communism'."
"Toptunov took up karate—a sport on the long and often inexplicable list of ideas and practices from outside the USSR that were officially forbidden."
"Toptunov and Korol arrived just in time for the completion of Chernobyl’s Unit Four."
"The young specialists learned quickly that it was one thing to understand how the reactor worked in principle, and quite another to understand it in reality."
"The RBMK was a triumph of Soviet gigantomania."
"The AZ-5 mechanism was not designed to bring about an abrupt emergency stop."
"By the time Viktor Brukhanov put his final signature on the paperwork...the world still spoke of only one nuclear accident. And that humiliation belonged entirely to the United States."
"Despite General Secretary Gorbachev’s ongoing Unionwide campaign against alcohol, they had no trouble getting a bottle of vodka."
"The reactor was a pistol with the hammer cocked. All that remained was for someone to pull the trigger."
"The explosion...was the first major accident involving an RBMK reactor, and the Ministry of Medium Machine Building set up a commission to investigate what had gone wrong."
"Dyatlov...had overseen the assembling, testing, and commissioning of more than forty VM reactor cores."
"Everything was in ruins. The gigantic steel water tanks had been torn apart like wet cardboard."
"If we survive until the morning, we’ll live forever."
"Get away from me—I’m from the reactor compartment."
"We need to evacuate the local population."
"We’ll be humiliated in front of the whole world!"
"Your instrument is broken. Get out of here!"
"I don’t know. I don’t understand any of it."
"You can’t restore the reactor, because there is no reactor."
"There’s been a collapse, but it’s not clear what happened."
"Under no circumstances should you panic."
"Measures are being taken to eliminate the consequences of the accident."
"A government commission has been set up."
"The Party speaks—and the Komsomol says, It’s done!"
"The world has no idea of the catastrophe."
"We should make a statement as soon as possible. We can't procrastinate."
"What do you want? What information do you want to release?"
"You'll put your Party card on the table if you bungle the parade."
"The sky was a clear blue, the forest a vivid green."
"An explosion has taken place at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant."
"A single photograph of the plant, said to have been taken soon after the explosion, was also broadcast on television."
"The streets echoed with new sounds: the barking of bewildered pet dogs."
"There were seas of red banners and biers of brightly colored peonies."
"They watched as yellow and green flames flared a hundred meters into the sky."
"The telephone lines and the hardwired radio speaker boxes in every apartment in Pripyat had fallen silent."
"Clearly something had to be done, but it was hard to know exactly what."
"We will evacuate the population from the thirty-kilometer zone," Ryzhkov said at last.
"The hot weather and the rotor wash created an almost constant tornado of radioactive dust reaching thirty meters into the air."
"By Thursday night, Legasov’s estimates suggested that it was already approaching 1,700 degrees centigrade."
"The China Syndrome posed two real threats."
"The streets of Kiev had been emitting gamma radiation for days, as hot particles carried in fallout from the reactor melted slowly into the surface of the asphalt."
"We’ve got to pick up our pace and work around the clock," Gorbachev said.
"Hundreds of people would be crushed in stampedes at the railway stations and airports."
"An order went out to find a good spot for blasting a hole through the wall—almost two meters thick and sheathed in stainless steel—using explosives."
"There is no truth to the rumor that alcohol is useful against radiation."
"At the same time, Soviet attempts to suppress further details of the accident were unraveling."
"The air offensive had been halted temporarily, a thin column of smoke—or vapor—rose into the air from the rubble."
"By May 1, Guskova and her staff had completed the work of identifying the patients who were less badly injured and moving those who required intensive care into separate rooms."
"Guskova explained that his closest relatives were already en route to Moscow for this purpose."
"Six days had now passed since the accident, and the initial latency period of ARS was ending for the most seriously irradiated patients."
"Vasily had been placed on an IV and was given constant injections."
"That night, he surprised Ludmilla with a bouquet of flowers he had asked his nurse to help smuggle in."
"Identifying marrow donors for the most acutely exposed patients was also becoming difficult."
"When Vasily Ignatenko heard that his younger sister Natalia was the best candidate for donation, he refused permission for the doctors to proceed."
"By the end of the first week, Hospital Number Six’s head of hematology, Dr. Alexander Baranov, had overseen three bone marrow transplants."
"The limitations of biological dosimetry were becoming apparent."
Robert Gale rose early the next morning, pulled on a singlet emblazoned with the letters "USA," and went for an eight-mile run through the streets of Moscow.
"After he had received the transfusion from his sister, Vasily Ignatenko was transferred to the eighth floor and placed in a life island."
"The worst-affected patients in Hospital Number Six were attacked from both without and within."
"The Liquidators: On Wednesday, May 14, 1986, Mikhail Gorbachev finally appeared on TV to address the accident."
"The civilian nuclear industry specialists arriving from other atomic plants across the USSR to help in the cleanup were horrified by the lack of preparation around them."
"By the end of May, General of the Army Valentin Varennikov had been summoned back from Kabul."
"The men of General Pikalov’s command who spread out across the zone in the summer of 1986 were participants in a vast and singular experiment."
"The Investigation: When Sergei Yankovsky arrived on the accident scene shortly before dawn on April 26, he wondered why he had bothered."
"The mood was somber and tense, and the wood-paneled conference hall was packed."
"This report contains information that blackens the name of Soviet science. We think it expedient that its authors face punishment by the Party and the criminal court."
"The defect of the system was that the designers did not foresee the awkward and silly actions by the operators."
"Impressed by such apparently unprecedented candor from Soviet scientists... the delegates left the hall confident in the future of Soviet atomic energy."
"I did not lie in Vienna, Legasov said to his colleagues. But I did not tell the whole truth."
"Directly overlooking the gaping shell of Unit Four and the remains of the shattered reactor within, Area M was a shambles of scorched rubble and chunks of masonry thrown into the air by the force of the explosion."
"The radiation was so intense that afterward it became visible on film, seeping into Kostin’s cameras, rising through the sprockets, leaving ghostly traces at the foot of his pictures, like high-water marks after a flood."
"The costs had risen to more than 1 million rubles—or $1.5 million—a day."
"By now, Unit Four was no longer a recognizable part of a nuclear power plant, its shattered facade enveloped by sheer walls of burgundy-painted, mortar-streaked steel."
"Their belief in the power of vodka to protect the body against radiation led them to break down the doors of the settlement’s liquor store."
"The streetlights still came on at night, and operatic music sometimes crackled from the speakers mounted along Kurchatov Street."
"The Soviet people had been well prepared to expect harsh justice for the men whose corruption and incompetence had despoiled the land of three republics and poisoned thousands of innocent victims."
"The problem of coal has become clear. Nuclear power provides the only solution."
"For us, the war continues, and, little by little, we are slipping away from this world."
"The director has primary responsibility for everything that’s happening at the plant and with the staff. So I had to."
"That’s what we want to know. Are we more like barn swallows or soybeans in terms of radiation-induced mutation?"
"I just dropped by for a moment to look at you."
"The less you think about it, the longer you’ll live."
"But when I went back to Ukraine, they started telling me about people who had died. Was it due to radiation? I don’t know."
"We know that the invisible enemy is eating away inside us like a worm."