Bathroom Reads #8: MIDNIGHT IN CHERNOBYL by Adam Higginbotham

For most of my life I've had a  quite frankly morbid fascination with disasters, stretching back all the way to my childhood. Why this is, I have no idea, though perhaps it might have something to do with my youthful interest in the classic monster movies (I was one of those typical children who took delight in constructing cities in SimCity, only to destroy them with disasters afterwards). One subcategory of disasters I find especially compelling is industrial disasters, specifically those involving hazardous/toxic waste, and also the problem of the handling, storage and disposal of said toxic waste (on that note, I highly recommend Expert Judgement on Markers to Deter Inadvertent Human Intrusion into the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, which was a report that Sandia Laboratories composed for the American office of Nuclear Waste Isolation in 1993: you can read the PDF here: https://wipp.energy.gov/library/cca/CCA_1996_References/Chapter%207/CREL3328.PDF). Here, I can at least identify the fountainhead for that interest, and it was the explosion and meltdown of Reactor Number Four at the Chernobyl Atomic Energy Station that occurred on April 26, 1986. Growing up in the 1980s, I remember that this story was all over the news, and it was an event that I followed with much interest. Really, I suppose one could also say that my interest in all things related to the Soviet Union can also be traced back to the Chernobyl accident. 

Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster, by Adam Higginbotham, might just be one of my all-time favorite nonfiction books. I got this one early in 2020, when it had just been released in paperback, around the same time that I was watching the HBO Chernobyl miniseries (a miniseries that, while well-made and with great production values, plays very hard and loose with the facts, which is very ironic when you consider that its tagline was "What is the cost of lies?"). The author spent more than 10 years conducting hundreds of hours of interviews with many people involved in the accident, along with utilizing letters, unpublished memoirs, declassified documents, and other such material. The end result is a very well-researched and gripping read that chronicles not only the Chernobyl disaster and its aftermath but also the terminal decline of the Soviet Union, and I highly recommend it. It's all here: chapters on the design and construction of the Soviet RBMK reactors, the events leading up to the disaster, the disaster itself (and the frantic around-the-clock attempts to prevent a second explosion/further meltdown), the construction of the Sarcophagus to contain the reactor's remains, the investigation into the cause of the accident (and the trial for those held responsible)... even the Elephant's Foot gets its own chapter. There's also a nice picture selection, and many helpful maps and diagrams (including a detailed map of the city of Pripyat). 

The book is very well-written. Consider this passage in the chapter on the erection of the Sarcophagus: "When Slavsky arrived to survey the project once more, on November 13, the Sarcophagus was all but complete - a terrible edifice of black angles, still and ominous, which perfectly expressed its purpose, like a medieval fantasy of a prison to hold Satan himself. It was an extraordinary achievement, a technical triumph in the face of horrifying conditions, and a new pinnacle of Soviet gigantomania: the engineers boasted that the structure contained 440,000 cubic meters of concrete, 600,000 cubic meters of gravel, and 7,700 tonnes of metal. The costs had risen to more than 1 million rubles - or $1.5 million - a day. As he gazed up at his masterpiece, a cathedral of brutalism in concrete and steel, it was said that tears welled in the old man's eyes." 

And although Higginbotham does a good job explain such complex matters as nuclear physics to the layman, the book never forgets the human heart of the struggle, and much time is spent with the plant technicians, firefighters, doctors and nurses, scientists, and soldiers who put their lives on the line (and in some cases sacrificed their health and/or life) to stop the disaster. When I think of the bravery of those men and women, many of whom knew they were marching off to their respective dooms, it's hard not to get a bit choked up. One of the best chapters in the book, "Inside Hospital Number Six," deals with the patients suffering from acute radiation syndrome, and the horrifying suffering and death that accursed those who were exposed to the worst of the radiation and fallout. It's all quite poignant, and one of my favorite passages in the book occurs at the end of the chapter: "By the end of the third week in May, the death toll from the accident had reached twenty, and Alexander Yuvchenko grew frightened. His white blood cell counts plunged to zero, and his remaining hair fell out. When will it be my turn? he wondered. Alone in their rooms, the most seriously injured survivors began to fear the darkness, and the lights in some wards were kept on constantly. A good Communist, Yuvchenko wasn't religious and knew no prayers. Yet each evening, he lay awake and pleaded with God to let him live through one more night." 

This year Higginbotham had a new book published, this one dealing with the Challenger explosion, another disaster that fascinated me as a child. I asked for it for my birthday next month. A potential future bathroom read?