Midnight in Chernobyl

Adam Higginbotham

📚 GENRE: History

📃 PAGES: 562

✅ COMPLETED: May 9, 2020

🧐 RATING: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

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Short Summary

Journalist Adam Higginbotham takes a close look at the events, mystery, lies, and secrecy that led to history’s worst nuclear power plant disaster in Pripyat, Ukraine. In Midnight in Chernobyl, Higginbotham describes what happened at Chernobyl in 1986.

Key Takeaways

1️⃣ Be Decisive In A Crisis — Following Reactor No. 4’s explosion at Chernobyl, the Soviet government struggled to make a decision about evacuating the people in the small town of nearby Pripyat, Ukraine. The hesitation caused a lot of harm as a cloud of radiation swept over the town. When faced with a crisis, try to be decisive and take swift action.  

2️⃣ This Was Almost Horrific — This was history’s worst nuclear power plant disaster, but it could have been a lot more deadly. Some really amazing bravery and effort helped prevent the reactor from completely blowing up and setting off the other three nearby reactors at Chernobyl. 

3️⃣ Don’t Take Shortcuts — The primary cause of the disaster was the poor design of the RBMK-1000 reactor. The reactor’s engineers cut corners to save time and costs, and it ultimately led to what happened at Chernobyl. Give a full and complete effort, regardless of what you’re working on. 

Favorite Quote

"The temperature inside the reactor rose to 4,650 degrees centigrade — not quite as hot as the surface of the sun."

Book Notes 📑

Chapter 1

  • 1969 — Energy ministers of the Soviet Union Communist Party task Viktor Bryukhanov to build an atomic power plant consisting of four reactors on the banks of Pripyat, Ukraine.
    • Plant was called Chernobyl after a small town in Ukraine.
    • Plant costed 400 million rubles, which was a huge amount of money.
  • A town was essentially built around the power plant. Pripyat became a big city.
    • The plant was only 10 minutes away from the city, which had 50,000 people.
  • The first reactor was planned to be activated in 1975. 
    • Reactor No. 2 would follow in 1979.
  • 1972 — Viktor Bryukhanov tried to resign. The corrupt government refused to allow it.
  • 1985 — The 4 reactors were built and ready to fire up.

Chapter 2

  • Everything in the universe is made up of atoms.
    • Atoms are 1 million times smaller than the width of a human hair.
    • Composed of empty space.
    • At the center of every atom is a nucleus.
  • When the nucleus breaks off, it releases energy.
  • Radiation is produced by the disintegration of unstable atoms.
  • Atoms of different elements vary by weight (number of protons and neutrons in each nucleus).
  • Radioactivity or radiation occurs when elements try to shed neutrons and become a new element or a new isotope.
    • When this process occurs, energy is released.
  • Everything emits radiation to some degree. It’s invisible.
  • Ionizing radiation is very dangerous. It can hurt and kill things or people. This radiation takes three forms: Alpha particles, beta particles, gamma rays.
      1. Alpha Particles — Large, heavy, slow. Cannot penetrate skin. If swallowed or inhaled, could be deadly. 
          • Polonium-210 is in cigarette smoke.
      1. Beta Particles — Smaller, faster. Can penetrate into tissue. Beyond 10 feet, beta particles can’t do much damage. Dangerous if consumed in any way. These are often mistaken by the body for essential elements.
      2. Gamma Rays — High frequency electromagnetic waves that travel at speed of light. Can travel really far and penetrate basically anything. Pass straight through a human being.
  • The nuclear power industry has military origins.
    • The first nuclear reactor ever built was made by hand under the University of Chicago football field in 1942. It was the foundation of the Manhattan project, which was a research and development undertaking in World War II that produced the world’s first nuclear weapons. Led by the United States.
    • More reactors were made in Washington. They were designed to produce Plutonium for use in the United States’ growing collection of atomic bombs.
  • 1952 — USSR begins working on its own nuclear atomic weapons to match the United States.
    • 1953 — USSR tests a hydrogen bomb successfully.
      • Both the USSR and the United States now had the capability of wiping out humanity.
  • Nuclear weapon process:
    • A large number of uranium atoms fission in a fraction of a second, releasing all of their energy to create a blast of heat and light.
  • Nuclear reactors must be delicately monitored and regulated. You don’t want the energy to be released quickly.
    • Reactors are produced to provide nuclear energy and power electricity throughout a town or city.
    • Neutrons must be artificially controlled to ensure the chain reaction and energy release remains constant.
      • If too many neutrons are produced in each atom during fission, you risk a huge atomic nuclear explosion. If too few neutrons are produced, the reactor/atoms might just fail and stop working.
  • Rods in the reactor control the neutron frequency during fission.
    • If the rods are off by even a little, neutron production could change.
    • Coolant is also needed to keep heat levels stable. If coolant is off, the atoms could get thrown off as well.
  • Other explosions happened at nuclear plants in the USSR in the 1960s, but the Soviets always covered them up and didn’t let them become public knowledge.

Chapter 3

  • 1983 — Reactor No.4 at Chernobyl goes “critical” for the first time.
    • This just means it was loaded with fuel, sealed, and approved for operation. Critical means everything is all good when it comes to nuclear power plants.
  • April 25, 1986 — Troubling data comes in from Reactor No. 4 at Chernobyl. This was the day before the explosion.

Chapter 4

  • 1975 — One of the USSR’s previous nuclear reactors had a meltdown.
    • The meltdown occurred primarily because the people who assembled the plant and managed it cut corners and costs.
    • The accident was called something else and blamed on something else, and the real reasons for the meltdown were covered up. 
      • Other plants were not informed of the real reasons. They were not warned.
  • 1977 — The first reactor at the Chernobyl plant goes critical.
    • Energy from the reactor went out into the powerlines and the Soviet grid to provide energy to the city and people.
  • Chernobyl plant was criticized by some for being far too big, making the fission process difficult.
    • During the first maintenance shut down, the cooling pipes were found to be corroded.
  • RBMK-1000 — This was the reactor most plants used. It was very faulty and had issues that were covered up. The 1975 reactor meltdown was a RBMK–1000 model reactor. The ones that Chernobyl were also RBMK–1000 models.
  • 1982 — A broken pipe in reactor No. 1 at Chernobyl causes radiation to leak out into the town of Pripyat. A partial meltdown had occurred. It was caused by one of the cooling valves not operating correctly.
    • The incident was classified as top-secret by the KGB.
  • The AZ-5 component (safety shut down rods) of the RBMK-1000 reactors were faulty and had issues as well.

Chapter 5

  • August 25, 1986 at 11 p.m. — This was the night before the incident at Chernobyl.
    • In reactor No. 4, the directors and managers were supposed to put the reactor through some kind of safety test. The test kept getting delayed and the test probably should’ve been aborted all together. Instead, they kept going.
    • One of the young engineers made a mistake, accidentally lowering the reactor’s power outage, which altered the atoms and sent dangerous chemicals into the reactors core.
    • They should have ended the test, but they kept it going and tried to get the power back up by removing the rods in the reactor. This increased the power and saved the reactor from shutting off, but the removal of the rods created an unsafe condition.
      • They had removed 203 of the 211 rods from the reactor’s core.
      • The reinsertion of those rods caused a “reactor runaway.”
    • Two pumps connected to the reactor turned on, releasing too much cooling water into the reactor at that low power level.
      • Because no rods were in place, the water was moving too fast around the cooling loop and was entering the core in a boiling state, which created steam, which made the reactor more vulnerable to an increase in power levels. And the engineers were actively trying to increase the power level. Not good. A domino effect was occurring.
    • The coolant water continued to come into the core at a boiling level, creating a lot of steam and limited neutron absorption, which caused more reactivity in the reactor a.k.a. more heat.
      • The control center wasn’t showing that there were any issues going on.
    • The engineers shut down the reactor and initiated the AZ-5 rods to end the test. The AZ-5 rods penetrated the cooling system and basically sent the reactor into self-destruct mode.
      • Thermal power went to 100 times the maximum level.
      • Temperature reached 3000 centigrade.
      • Things started exploding and breaking apart.
      • Water circulation stopped and existing water in the core turned to steam. Not good.
    • Reactor No. 4 basically blew up.
    • Quote: “The temperature inside the reactor rose to 4,650 degrees centigrade—not quite as hot as the surface of the sun.”
    • Uranium fuel and control rods disintegrated and were sent up into the air.
      • Highly dangerous radioactive isotopes like Iodine-131, Neptunium-239, and Plutonium-239 were sent into the atmosphere and into the free air over the surrounding towns.
        • It looked like a mushroom of chemicals exploding up into the air.

Chapter 6

  • The nearby fire station immediately sent as many firefighters as possible to the plant.
    • The fire station deemed it a Level 3 Emergency — the most urgent level.
  • At the reactor, all water supplies had stopped completely. They had to find a way to get water into the reactor.
  • All firefighters possible were sent to the scene, even those from Kyiv, Ukraine, which is Ukraine’s capital.
  • The firefighters tried to put out the fires in and around Reactor 4, but it was not easy. The fires were radioactive and the firefighters were having issues getting water in their hoses.
    • Many people were starting to die from the exposure to lethal amount of radiation.
    • The fires had to be contained because they were contributing to the radiation being sent into the air. If the wind sent the radiation towards the other three reactors, those reactors might start to go crazy too.
  • At this point, there was an insane amount of radiation everywhere in and around the reactor and plant.
    • The leaders should’ve warned the town of Pripyat, but they hesitated.
    • There were conflicting reports being given to plant Director Bryukhanov, who chose to believe the reports that the radiation levels were not that bad. Unfortunately, this was incorrect. The radiation levels were awful and the town needed to be warned.
  • By 6:30 AM on Saturday, April 26, the 87 fire crews finally put out all of the external fires around Reactor 4. But there was a ton of radiation in the air.

Chapter 7

  • The government in Kyiv didn’t seem to understand the significance of what had happened in the early hours of April 26.
    • They seemed to think there was an accident, but it wasn’t too serious.
    • They couldn’t get a good answer as to what was going on from anyone at the plant.
    • The government believed that the reactor was fine and that coolant was being applied to recover the reactor.
    • It wasn’t until some of the government officials actually arrived at Chernobyl that they realized how bad the incident was, and that the reactor was completely destroyed.
  • The reactor was still burning up and everybody had to find a way to stop it because the burning up was just emitting more and more chemical reactions and radiation into the air.
    • Politicians were trying to figure out what to do and still had not evacuated the town of Pripyat.
      • Readings in the town of Pripyat were alarmingly high.
      • Wind and rain could bring the radiation down onto the city and people.

Chapter 8

  • The people in Pripyat were starting to get nervous. They knew that something was wrong, but they didn’t know exactly what it was.
    • Government officials still had not alerted the city.

Chapter 9

  • With the core of the reactor still burning and emitting radiation, government officials were discussing how to smother it.
    • Dousing it with water wouldn’t work. The core was so hot that any water applied would just evaporate immediately and turn into more steam, which would only make matters worse and further contribute to the radiation production.
    • Because the reactor and its surroundings were so radioactive, everyone had to keep their distance and be very careful around it. This contributed to the trouble of putting out the burning going on in the core.
  • Sunday, April 27 — Government officials finally decide to evacuate Pripyat, but they still haven’t actually given the order. They were still hesitating.
  • Sunday, April 27, 1:10 PM — Order is finally given to evacuate Pripyat.
  • Government officials decided to use helicopters to drop clay and lead into the reactor to stop the blaze and radiation emission.
    • They also dropped in 50,000 bags of sand that they had to hand-fill at a nearby riverbank.
  • Pripyat citizens left the city on buses. They were taken to various surrounding towns to stay at.

Chapter 10

  • Within 24 hours of escaping the reactor, the mushroom cloud of radiation had been swept away by the wind to Scandinavia and Denmark.
    • By 2 PM on Sunday in Sweden, Swedish officials had detected the radiation in their country and came to the conclusion that they had been contaminated by a nuclear accident abroad.
      • Swedish government approached the USSR and asked if something happened on their territory. The USSR lied and said they didn’t know anything.
  • April 28 — The USSR makes a formal announcement of what happened at Chernobyl.
  • April 29 — The USSR releases a formal statement to governments of most countries.
    • In the United States, Chernobyl was the top headline in the news.
      • In the USSR, the story was suppressed and put on the back page.
  • The cloud of radiation was moving all over, contaminating many countries, including Poland, Germany, Czechoslovakia, and France.
    • These countries were furious at the USSR for not warning them earlier.
    • Europe turned into a panic.
  • The USSR was trying to prevent news stories in the west, but the attempted suppression only made rumors worse.
    • The New York Post claimed 15,000 people died as a result of the accident.
  • Heroic efforts were being put forth by the helicopter crews, who were risking their health to dump materials into the reactor. Progress was slowly being made.
  • A wind shift above the reactor began sending the radiation South, towards Kyiv.
  • The USSR finally decided to evacuate more surrounding cities.

Chapter 11

  • Despite all the materials being dropped in, the reactor began to inexplicably get hotter.
    • Officials began to worry that the core could turn to lava and burn through the concrete vault below the reactor and into the earth below.
      • This was the doomsday scenario for reactor accidents a.k.a. the China Syndrome.
        • Could contaminate the water the cities used.
        • Even worse, if this scenario happened, the lava would make contact with coolant storages/water and create another huge explosion that could blow up the other three reactors and send enough radiation and chemicals into the air to make Europe uninhabitable for 100 years.
  • Officials and engineers had to find a way to get that cooler/water out of the storages under the core to prevent the China Syndrome scenario.
    • A plan was developed to drill holes in through the side of the reactor to pump the water out.
    • While this was going on, the reactor was continuously getting hotter. If it hit that coolant after breaking through the concrete floor, a huge explosion would occur. This thing was a ticking time bomb that could go off at any second.

Chapter 12

  • The plan to remove the coolant out of the basement was slowly working.
  • The reactor was slowly cooling down. The major threat of a complete reactor meltdown seemed to be over.

Chapter 13

  • The hospitals were chaos.
    • Many of the people from the reactor began dying in the hospitals because of the radiation they were exposed to.
  • The effects of the radiation are freaky.
    • Skin changes color, hair falls out, skin peels off, burns develop, you get nauseous.
    • It all happens over time, not immediately.
    • Internally, the radiation particles/rays eat away at your organs.
    • For the amount of exposure that the people at the plant had, they had a little chance of survival.

Chapter 14

  • Battle tanks and armies of people from all over the USSR came to Chernobyl to clear the debris from around the plant.
    • Everything was still highly radioactive so it was dangerous.
      • Because of this, each helper’s time on the job at to be tracked so they didn’t get overly exposed. Usually it was like 15-20 minutes.
      • When coming up with a game plan, leaders had to calculate how many people they would need to do each task based on time of exposure.
  • You can’t “wash away” radioactive particles in the environment. You can only really relocate them to a different spot.
    • This is one of the things the USSR had to do to recover from this.
    • The country also had to permanently isolate the remains of Reactor 4. Sealing the reactor was highly dangerous because of the radiation.
  • Evacuations throughout the USSR continued, especially children.
    • About 500,000 people had to evacuate.
    • All children in Kyiv were forced to leave.
  • The radiation created a giant mess throughout the USSR that had to be cleaned up.
    • Infrastructure, houses, everything had to be scrubbed.
    • Animals had to be killed off and disposed of.
    • Trees in the forest near Pripyat had to be mowed down and put in concrete tombs.

Chapter 15

  • An unnecessary power surge was initially listed as the cause of the accident.
    • Operator error was the reason for the power surge.
    • Poor design of the reactor was also blamed.
      • The RBMK-1000 was found to be poorly designed and unsafe. Corners were cut in designing and building the reactor.
      • This accident was the end of the RBMK–1000 reactor.
  • As the director of the plant, Brukhanov was removed from his position, arrested, and sent to prison.

Chapter 16

  • The USSR pulled together and successfully created a “tomb” for the ruined reactor.
    • They essentially buried the reactor under a pile of concrete.
      • It was a dangerous and difficult assignment, but they pulled it off.
  • October 1 — Reactor 1 came back online.

Chapter 17

  • In September, the official death toll was determined to be 31 people.
  • The cleanup of Pripyat continued.
    • The government led the citizens to believe that Pripyat could be lived in again, but this was not realistic.
    • Pripyat citizens were displaced all over Ukraine due to the evacuations. 

Chapter 18

  • July 7, 1987 — Brukhanov and five others go on trial for the nuclear accident.
    • They were being charged with negligence.
  • The RBMK–1000 reactor model was faulty in its design. This was important in Brukhanov’s defense case.
    • In Brukhanov’s trial, the court/judge basically didn’t consider the RBMK-1000 design issues. A separate trial was being prepared against the designers.
  • The trail was completely set against the six men. No matter what, the judge was going to find them guilty and make them pay for the accident.
    • Brukhanov got 10 years in prison. 
  • December, 1987 — all three Chernobyl reactors were back online.
    • The area was still heavily contaminated with radiation.
    • All three reactors upgraded their safety rods and other components.
  • The total cost of everything with this accident was $128 billion.
  • The Chernobyl accident was kind of the beginning of the end for the USSR.
    • Citizens began to see how they were lied to about the accident and everything else. They no longer trusted the government.
      • Citizen revolts started to occur.
  • December, 1991 — Ukraine citizens vote to separate from the USSR. The USSR collapsed soon after that.

Chapter 19

  • Years after the accident, Ukraine launched a team of people to take a look at Reactor 4.
    • They found that all the loads of sand and other materials dropped in from the helicopters had missed the reactor’s core and vault.
      • The reactor basically burned out. That’s what stopped it. All the loads dropped in were essentially pointless.
  • The Nuclear Safety Board of Inquiry released a report that stated that the RBMK-1000’s poor design was the primary reason for the accident, not operator error.
    • Operator error was still part of the reason for the accident, but it was not the chief reason, as it was assumed up to that point.
    • Every investigator in the report now agreed that the insertion of the control rods (instead of shutting down the reactor) was the cause of the accident. Because of the reactor’s poor design, and the fact that the designers kept the reactor’s weaknesses secret, the operators had no idea that inserting the control rods into the core at a low power level would trigger a reactor runaway.
      • The USSR government and officials still refused to believe the truth. They wanted to keep scapegoating the operators.
  • By 2008, the reactor’s poor design, and the designer’s cover-up/secrets about the reactor, were fully recognized as the primary reason for the accident.
    • Russia’s president awarded the men of the reactor with courage awards.

Chapter 20

  • 2011 — A giant dome was placed over Reactor 4 to prevent the possibility of further issues.
    • The area around the Chernobyl plant is safe enough now that they have tours of the area.