Chernobyl Utopia In Flames 2of4 The Accident 10... [exclusive] Online

By dawn, the glowing cloud of cesium-137, iodine-131, and strontium-90 was drifting westward over Europe. In the control room, Dyatlov, Toptunov, and Chief Engineer Nikolai Fomin were already suffering acute radiation sickness. They vomited. Their skin turned brown. They refused to believe that a Soviet reactor could explode.

: At 1:23:45 AM , a massive steam explosion, followed by a second nuclear excursion, blew the 1,000-ton lid off the reactor, releasing 50 tons of radioactive dust into the atmosphere. Immediate Aftermath and Silence Chernobyl Utopia in Flames 2of4 The Accident 10...

In the early spring of 1986, the city of Pripyat, Ukraine, was advertised as the pinnacle of Soviet scientific achievement—a "nuclear utopia." Built to house the workers of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant and their families, it boasted tree-lined boulevards, a gleaming Palace of Culture, amusement park rides, and the most modern apartment blocks in the USSR. The promise was intoxicating: limitless, cheap, safe energy from the atom. It was a Communist paradise powered by fission. By dawn, the glowing cloud of cesium-137, iodine-131,