内容简介

The definitive, dramatic untold story of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster, based on original reporting and new archival research.

April 25, 1986, in Chernobyl, was a turning point in world history. The disaster not only changed the world’s perception of nuclear power and the science that spawned it, but also our understanding of the planet’s delicate ecology. With the images of the abandoned homes and playgrounds beyond the barbed wire of the 30-kilometer Exclusion Zone, the rusting graveyards of contaminated trucks and helicopters, the farmland lashed with black rain, the event fixed for all time the notion of radiation as an invisible killer.

Chernobyl was also a key event in the destruction of the Soviet Union, and, with it, the United States’ victory in the Cold War. For Moscow, it was a political and financial catastrophe as much as an environmental and scientific one. With a total cost of 18 billion rubles—at the time equivalent to $18 billion—Chernobyl bankrupted an already teetering economy and revealed to its population a state built upon a pillar of lies.

The full story of the events that started that night in the control room of Reactor No.4 of the V.I. Lenin Nuclear Power Plant has never been told—until now. Through two decades of reporting, new archival information, and firsthand interviews with witnesses, journalist Adam Higginbotham tells the full dramatic story, including Alexander Akimov and Anatoli Dyatlov, who represented the best and worst of Soviet life; denizens of a vanished world of secret policemen, internal passports, food lines, and heroic self-sacrifice for the Motherland. Midnight in Chernobyl, award-worthy nonfiction that reads like sci-fi, shows not only the final epic struggle of a dying empire but also the story of individual heroism and desperate, ingenious technical improvisation joining forces against a new kind of enemy.

作者简介

Adam Higginbotham writes for The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Wired, GQ, Businessweek, Smithsonian, Men's Journal, and The Atavist. He began his career in magazines and newspapers in London, where he was the editor-in-chief of The Face and a contributing editor at The Sunday Telegraph

精彩摘录

作为国际原子能机构12个创始成员国之一，苏联从1957年起就有义务向国际原子能机构报告发生在境内的任何核事故。然而，其后几十年中，苏联的核设施发生了数十起危险事故，却没有向国际原子能机构提及过任何一起。在将近30年的时间里，蒙在鼓里的苏联公众和整个世界都认为，苏联运行着全世界最安全的核工业。然而，保持这一假象的代价十分巨大。

——引自章节：二　　α、β和γ

作为国际原子能机构12个创始成员国之一，苏联从1957年起就有义务向国际原子能机构报告发生在境内的任何核事故。然而，其后几十年中，苏联的核设施发生了数十起危险事故，却没有向国际原子能机构提及过任何一起。在将近30年的时间里，蒙在鼓里的苏联公众和整个世界都认为，苏联运行着全世界最安全的核工业。然而，保持这一假象的代价十分巨大。

——引自章节：二　　α、β和γ