The Truth About Chernobyl

Grigori Medvedev, once deputy chief engineer for the first reactor unit at Chernobyl during its construction, was sent back to the plant as a special investigator after the 1986 explosion. At that time he was a deputy director in the Soviet Ministry of Energy department that built nuclear stations. Drawing on many interviews, he assembles a minute-by-minute record of the actions taken, and not taken, on either side of the blast. He faults the reactor's design, poor decisions by operators, safety violations, careless managers and negligence high in the energy bureaucracy. Written in a personal, often first-person voice, the book has only seven footnotes. It won the 1991 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for science and technology.

Craig Mazin, creator of the Chernobyl TV series, called it essential reading from a Soviet physicist who was on the ground, combining history with clear science.