The Heroes of Chernobyl

“The three Men got ready for the plunge into the abyss, for they knew the lives of millions lie now in their hands.”

This seems like the prologue to an action-filled novel but it’s not.

On April 26, 1986, the world saw it’s worst ever nuclear disaster -the Chernobyl meltdown.

What started as a routine system check led to the damage of a reactor vessel due to power surge leading to the expose of the graphite moderator to the air, which caused it go on fire.The subsequent radioactive fallout spread to large parts of the Soviet Union and Europe with 60% of the fallout settling down in Belarus.

Measures were taken to evacuate citizens of Pripyat, forming a 30 km evacuation zone around the site of the disaster by the end of the week.
But 10 days after the initial explosion, officials found out a much dangerous situation was about to unfold, one which could lead to loss of millions of lives and making Europe uninhabitable-the possibility of nuclear steam explosions.

The plant’s water cooling system failed which lead to the formation of a pool underneath the reactor core, it was only a matter of time before the molten pool caused the meltdown of the barriers and the core falling into the pool resulting in a catastrophic nuclear explosion which was estimated to reach a threshold of 3–5 megatons.

The only thing left to forego this situation was to release a critical pressure valve and only one person knew of its location.

Alexei Ananenko, one of the plant engineers who knew the location of the valve along with fellow engineer Valeri Bezpalov and shift supervisor Boris Baranov were asked to undertake a suicide mission and they did just that

They were able to reach the valve in time and in the next few days, over 5 million gallons of water was released, ending the crisis once and for all.

The 3 Bravehearts died 3 weeks later due to severe radiation poisoning and buried in lead coffins.

Who are heroes?
They are all around us, it may be your friend, your parents, your neighbours, it can be anyone.

True heroism is remarkably sober, very undramatic. It is not the urge to surpass all others at whatever cost, but the urge to serve others, at whatever cost. — Arthur Ashe

For the heroes of Chernobyl-Salute!