An astonishing take on the whole nuclear disaster. I was quite shocked at some the facts and statistics that the author managed to find.
In part a journey through a deserted town, in part a historical factual story. This take on the disaster left me at times having to get up and just walk around to take in the facts.
Absolutely brilliantly written. ( )

This is a simply written account of the terrible nuclear disaster, interspersed with the author's travelogue about his tour of the site. My interest was to know the history of the disaster - its causes, how and when it happened, and its aftermath - and this book did not fulfil it as much as I liked. However, it did provide me with a brief history of nuclear accidents, and the basics of the Chernobyl disaster. A bit less of the travelogue, and a bit more of the actual details surrounding the actual disaster, would have made it a lot better. Still, this book is a good enough introduction to more elaborate works on the subject. ( )

I have a love/hate relationship with books like this. I love them, because I have a burning desire to understand how something as devastating as this could ever happened in a so-called educated society. But at the same time, books like this drive me nuts, because they often serve to put a firm underline on how incredibly stupid those people who hold the safety and fate of the world in their hands truly are.

The numbers that are detailed in this book, the facts, and the mind-blowingly stupid and uninformed decisions that were made, are awe-inspiring.

This is an important book. And, unfortunately, though it makes some very important points about what not to do in a crisis situation of this magnitude, nothing will be learned from it. We'll all shake our heads and stupidly assume that in the 30 years since this happened, we now know better.

When we all know we don't. ( )

On April 26, 1986 the fourth reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant (officially named the Vladmir Ilyich Lenin Nuclear Power Plant) exploded during a test, releasing huge amounts of radiation and contamination into a large section of Ukraine. The USSR fought to control the contamination while striving to prevent the accident becoming an embarrassment to the communist nation. I was a senior in high school at the time. I remember the initial news stories stated that an unknown nuclear event of some type had been traced to the soviet union by European nuclear scientists based on increased radiation picked up by monitoring equipment. It took days for the USSR to admit there had been an accident. As more details slowly came out, it became a frightening tale of emergency workers dying of radiation and thousands of people permanently evacuated from their homes. I have always been curious to know more about the causes and aftermath of the accident. I've seen many, many photos of the abandoned city of Pripyat and watched documentaries about the accident and clean-up efforts, effects on wildlife in the exclusion zone around the accident site, and the long-term effects on the estimated 2.1 million people who still live in areas contaminated by the accident. I enjoyed the recent 4-part HBO miniseries on Chernobyl and wanted to read more. That's how I came across this book by Andrew Leatherbarrow.

Leatherbarrow was also interested in the accident, its causes and effects, but found most books and information to be too technical for those outside the nuclear field to fully understand. He spent years researching and wrote about what he learned, publishing it online for free download. He carefully edited his work based on reader input....and later published his findings in book form. He presents an interesting and factual account not only of the Chernobyl accident, but also gives facts about the history of nuclear energy, other accidents that have occurred and the safety of nuclear power versus other forms of energy production. He talks in depth about a tour he took to the site in 2011.

I listened to this book on audio. Narrated by Michael Page, the audio is about 6.5 hours long. Page reads at a nice pace and brings the narrative to life. I enjoyed this entire book! I found the author's research and presentation of the facts to be sound and very interesting. I also enjoyed his personal account about his trip to Ukraine to tour the exclusion zone. After listening to this account, I want to watch the miniseries again because I think I have a greater understanding of the events now.

I learned a lot from this book, not only about the accident but about nuclear power in general. Very informative and enjoyable! I highly recommend it to anyone interested in knowing more about Chernobyl.
( )

Frustrated by the repinning of wild rumors and outright lies about Chernobyl on Pinterest, I was poking around other sites to try to find some mythbusting when I read about this book. Sadly, I don't remember which site mentioned it as their source for the real story of the legend of the divers, but I set out to get my hands on it. I asked my library to do an interlibrary loan and they must have liked the sound of this book as much as I did, because they opted instead to buy two copies for their own collection instead of borrowing one from another library system.

I learned something new in pretty much every chapter, which was a pleasant surprise, since I am not new to the topic.

I didn't know there would be pictures, but the middle of the book contains a section of high-contrast black and white photographs of the sort that I associate with an old favorite urbex zine, Infiltration. This artistic decision may not be accidental, as the author, it turns out, is himself an urban exploration enthusiast.

The book is carefully researched and well-written but the chronicle of his trip to Chernobyl and Pripyat is intrusive. It is interesting and humanizing, and brings the event up to date, making it seem not so long ago, but inserting it into the book in chunks -- interrupting the narrative flow of the Chernobyl timeline -- is intrusive. I think it should have gone at the end, so that it and the introduction in which he explains his interest in the topic (both of which are essentially memoir writing) could have bookended the more scientific/journalistic nonfiction midsection.

What matters is that the writing is compelling. Even the technical aspects of radiation itself, how reactors work, and of the Reactor 4 disaster (and the many other disasters and accidents recapped in the book) are easily understood -- although, again, I am not new to the subject matter. ( )