Ablaze

Piers Paul Read reconstructs the explosion of the fourth reactor unit at Chernobyl's V.I. Lenin plant and the years that followed. He spoke with engineers and operators on shift during the test on the night of April 25, interviewed the plant director while he served a ten-year negligence sentence, and visited once-secret sites such as Moscow's Hospital No. 6, the Kurchatov Institute and the formerly closed city of Obninsk. He also drew on declassified Soviet nuclear data, witnesses freer to talk after the failed 1991 coup, trial transcripts and secret Medical Commission records. He shows officials hiding design flaws and blaming staff, while the accident itself cost the system public faith, and frames it as a parable of totalitarian collapse.

Craig Mazin, creator of the Chernobyl TV series, called it an excellent and well-done Western history of the disaster, while noting it is a bit dated because of when it was written.