
Chernobyl
History of a Tragedy
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Narrated by:
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Leighton Pugh
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By:
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Serhii Plokhy
About this listen
Shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize
'An insightful and important book, that often reads like a good thriller, and that exposes the danger of mixing powerful technology with irresponsible politics' - Yuval Noah Harari, author of Sapiens
'As moving as it is painstakingly researched. . . a cracking read' - Viv Groskop, Observer
The gripping story of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, from an acclaimed historian and writer
On the morning of 26 April 1986 Europe witnessed the worst nuclear disaster in history: the explosion of a reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Soviet Ukraine. The outburst put the world on the brink of nuclear annihilation. In the end, less than five percent of the reactor's fuel escaped, but that was enough to contaminate over half of Europe with radioactive fallout.
In Chernobyl, Serhii Plokhy recreates these events in all of their drama, telling the stories of the firefighters, scientists, engineers, workers, soldiers, and policemen who found themselves caught in a nuclear Armageddon and succeeded in doing the seemingly impossible: extinguishing the nuclear inferno and putting the reactor to sleep. While it is clear that the immediate cause of the accident was a turbine test gone wrong, Plokhy shows how the deeper roots of Chernobyl lay in the nature of the Soviet political system and the flaws of its nuclear industry. A little more than five years later, the Soviet Union would fall apart, destroyed from within by its unsustainable communist ideology and the dysfunctional managerial and economic systems laid bare in the wake of the disaster.
A poignant, fast paced account of the drama of heroes, perpetrators, and victims, Chernobyl is the definitive history of the world's worst nuclear disaster.
Critic reviews
A must have in library
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Exciting, thoughtful and worrying
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Compelling Study of a 1980s Icon
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Fantastic
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There is a "but" though, and this might seem like a very pedantic thing to say; but how could they have picked someone to narrate this book, who cannot pronounce the word "Nuclear"? The word is in every other paragraph!
Surely at some point in the process (if not in an audition but at least in the first recording session), once you've heard "Nucular", "Nuculalalar", "Nuclurar" and "Nuclear" used interchangeably, you'll call "pause" and ask the guy to go and practice a bit more? It's indescribably annoying and almost ruined the book for me. As it was, every time the narrator mangled the word (which he does 50-60% of the time), a voice in my head silently screamed "NUCLEAR" in protest. It's like listening to a piece of music being played by an orchestra with one particularly loud instrument out of tune. Every time you hear the bum note you wince.
I'd recommend this for the subject matter, the quality of the material and the skill with which the story has been written. Just be prepared for the possibility that you'll spend the many hours you'll spend listening to this book intensely annoyed with the narrator (who is otherwise excellent).
The narrator can't pronounce "nuclear"
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I urge anyone believing that nuclear power is the answer to humanities energy requirements please read this book.
All biological life could be wiped out with a nuclear disaster even marginally larger than that at Chernobyl. A mere 5% of the 250 pound uranium was released into the air. The remaining unstable fuel that has a deadly half-life is 24000 years sits in a newly completed sarcophagus with a design life of 100 years......
Fantastic but Conflicting information: update required
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Very thorough history of the Chernobyl disaster
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Good book, mixed narration
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So In Depth
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Narrator says ‘nuclear’ wrong
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