Chernobyl

The Legacy of Chernobyl
$10.95
This book is a must read for any serious student of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. It was written not long after the accident (1990) and so lacks information about the long-term health effects. However, the detail about the interactions of the participants, the top-down, Moscow directed policies that intentionally misled everyone including the operators, the comprehensive data about the immediate radioactive release, and the description of the sequence of events and decisions leading to the accident are both amazing and well researched. One of the most revealing aspects is that the radiation release, as bad as it was, could have actually been FAR WORSE. Cooling the basement with liquid nitrogen averted a complete meltdown into the water table. However, the author, as well as most reporters, doesn't display an understanding of the importance of xenon buildup that led to a positive-feedback nuclear excursion as the xenon burned out leaving a super-prompt-critical core.

Zones of Exclusion: Pripyat and Chernobyl
$75.00
Found this book on a movie set and was amazed at the images. Photographed in 2001, this book brings the horrors of Chernobyl to life. Another event in our life that should not be forgotton. An amazing pictorial.

Chernobyl: Confessions of a Reporter
$35.00
Written by prizewinning journalist Igor Kostin, who braved severe radiation to take the only existing photograph of the Chernobyl plant on the day of its catastrophic destruction, Chernobyl: Confessions of a Reporter is a compilation of black-and-white and color photographs that Kostin continued to take for twenty years of the plant, the forbidden zone surrounding it, and the people who worked there. For the first time, Kostin presents Chernobyl's story in words as well as pictures, yet it is the photographs that utterly dominate Chernobyl: Confessions of a Reporter, captured images ranging from men transporting radioactive blocks with their naked hands to the evacuation of villages and the construction of the sacrophagus. A singularly compelling visual glimpse into the heart and aftermath of tragedy.

The Truth About Chernobyl
$12.00
This is the same "documentary" book Medvedev publushed in Russian in 1989. Quite entertaining, but also quite confusing and often misinforming where it touches on the causes of the disaster. It follows the official line of putting all the blame on the station personnel ("thankfully", most of the shift personnel died soon after the catastrophe from radiation sickness). It almost completely sidetracks the real cause: the faulty reactor design which made it uncontrollable under the circumstances.

If you feel confused when reading about "operational reactivity reserve" -- don't be. The author is either confused himself, or is trying (not very successfully) to cover the inadequacies of the official analysis. Too bad the Anatoly Dyatlov's book (the deputy chief engineer, one of the few first-hand participants who lived long enough to write about the disaster) wasn't ever translated from Russian.