I Was the Last Person in Chernobyl's Control Room and I'll Never Get Over What I Saw
Oleksiy Ananenko, a Ukrainian mechanical engineer who worked at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, was the last man in the control room after reactor No 4 malfunctioned during a safety examination. He told Sky News about the events that followed and what he witnessed in those crucial hours. He told the BBC that the acclaimed drama series Chernobyl didn't overstate the devastating, swift and observable impact on human physiology that the blast inflicted. "It looked like it would be a mass grave," Oleksiy said, recalling his journey to work that fateful day in 1986. "I was sure that the whole night shift had died there. At the moment of explosion I was in Pripyat, in my flat." "I was sleeping tightly, I didn't hear, I didn't see anything. In the morning I was to go to work, and so I did. I knew nothing about the disaster, I just got on a bus and went to work." "As I was coming close to the station, I saw from the bus that the block was destroyed. I always say that my hair stood on its end when I saw that." The New Safe Confinement sarcophagus covers the destroyed reactor number four at the Chernobyl nuclear power station. The 67-year-old, who began his employment at the facility in 1982, was the last man in the control room after reactor No 4 malfunctioned during a safety examination.
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Last Man in the Chernobyl Control Room
Oleksiy spoke with Oleksandr Akimov and technician Leonid Toptunov in the immediate aftermath. "They were not looking good, to put it mildly. It was clear they felt sick. They were very pale. Toptunov had literally turned white." Tragically, both succumbed to acute radiation syndrome within weeks. He continued: "I saw other colleagues who worked that night. Their skin had a bright red colour. They later died in hospital in Moscow.\n\n"Radiation exposure, red skin, radiation burns and steam burns were what many people talked about but it was never shown like this." As for his own experience, he ended the day looking as if he'd been sunbathing. He shared: "When I finished my shift, my skin was brown, as if I had a proper suntan all over my body. My body parts not covered by clothes - such as hands, face and neck - were red".
The Body Under Siege: Symptoms, Scars and Survival
In the aftermath of the explosion, 29 power plant workers and firefighters lost their lives to acute radiation syndrome, as per Soviet officials’ reports. Two more fatalities occurred due to injuries from the accident. Plant director Viktor Bryukhanov, chief engineer Nikolai Fomin and deputy chief engineer Anatoly Dyatlov were handed 10-year sentences in a labour camp for their part in the disaster. Speaking about Dyatlov, Oleksiy said: "The operators were afraid of him. When he was present at the block, it created tension for everyone. But no matter how strict he was, he was still a high-level professional." Vasily Ignatenko was amongst the initial firefighters dispatched to combat the blaze directly. Devastatingly, having travelled from nearby Pripyat, he remained unaware of the radiation danger. Ignatenko succumbed to acute radiation syndrome on 13 May 1986.
Daring Actions and the Hidden Toll
Three plant workers were forced to plunge beneath the tunnel to operate a faulty drainage valve, preventing the leak from contaminating the water supply and potentially triggering a catastrophic explosion. Oleksiy Ananenko, a chief engineer from one of the reactor sections, described his decision to dive down and repair the valve. "It was our job. If I didn't do it, they could just fire me. How would I find another job after that?" Miners were subsequently deployed to excavate beneath the reactor, creating room for a heat exchanger designed to prevent the reactor's core from polluting the water table and potentially sparking an unstoppable cascade of fatalities. In hospital, a man who biked to the bridge on the morning of 26 April to watch it was treated for a mild form of acute radiation syndrome. He had health problems afterwards after his date with his girlfriend near the Pripyat bridge that night.
