The Chernobyl Suicide Squad of 1986

Editor’s Note
In the rush of modern crises—climate tipping points, AI risks, geopolitical flashpoints—we rarely pause to ask: what does quiet, calculated bravery look like when the stakes are measured in millions of lives? This edition resurrects one of the 20th century’s most mythologised yet least understood acts of heroism. I’ve cross-referenced Soviet-era logs, post-Chernobyl scientific reports, direct interviews with the survivors, and peer-reviewed analyses of corium behaviour to deliver the unvarnished truth. No Hollywood glow. No zinc-coffin legends. Just three men, knee-deep in hell, who turned a valve and rewrote the map of Europe.

Read slowly. The darkness they entered still lingers in the questions we face today.

April 26, 1986, 01:23:40 local time. Reactor 4 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, 130 km north of Kyiv, rips itself open during a poorly planned safety test at critically low power. The RBMK-1000 design—cherished by the Soviet state for its ability to produce both electricity and weapons-grade plutonium—harbours a fatal flaw: a positive void coefficient. When coolant water boils away, reactivity increases. Steam voids form, power surges 100-fold in four seconds.

The 1,000-tonne biological shield is hurled upward like a manhole cover. Two workers die instantly. Thirty firemen and operators will follow within months from acute radiation syndrome. But the true nightmare is only beginning.

Over the next days, desperate firefighters pump thousands of tonnes of water into the blazing core. That water drains downward, flooding the basement corridors and the two-storey bubbler pools—massive reservoirs designed to condense steam and supply emergency cooling. Meanwhile, the exposed fuel melts into corium: a radioactive lava of uranium dioxide, zirconium, graphite, concrete and steel, burning at over 1,200 °C. By early May, this glowing mass has already eaten through three floors of reinforced concrete and is inching toward the water below.

Engineers monitoring the sub-reactor spaces deliver a chilling assessment: if the corium contacts the 20,000+ tonnes of water in the bubbler pools, a steam explosion of catastrophic scale could follow. Soviet physicist Vassili Nesterenko later calculated a blast equivalent to 3–5 megatons—enough to shatter the remaining three reactors, eject the entire radioactive inventory into the stratosphere, and render swathes of Ukraine, Belarus, and parts of Europe uninhabitable for generations.

Whether the physics supported a true megaton event remains debated among nuclear experts. Some analyses (including post-accident modelling by the Complex Expedition) suggest the corium would have fragmented and cooled rapidly upon hitting water, producing a violent but localised steam release rather than Armageddon. Others note that even a modest thermal explosion could have breached containment structures and accelerated groundwater contamination across the Pripyat River basin.

On May 6, 1986, the government commission issues the order: drain the pools—manually. The valves are located deep in flooded, pitch-black corridors beneath the ruined reactor. Radiation levels in the basement exceed 10,000 roentgens per hour in places. No robots exist for the task. No remote actuators function. Someone must walk in.

Three men step forward.

Oleksiy (Alexei) Ananenko, 32, senior mechanical engineer and shift maintenance specialist. He alone knows the exact location of the two critical sluice valves.

Valery Bespalov, turbine engineer, familiar with the labyrinthine pipework of the lower levels.

Boris Baranov, 48, shift supervisor, the senior man on site who insists on accompanying his younger colleagues “in case they need help.”

They are not conscripts. They are not suicidal. They are simply the only people on shift with the combined knowledge and courage to say yes.

Ananenko later recalled the moment with characteristic understatement:
“I never thought it might mean death, and they only sent me because I knew how to do it… They couldn’t have sent anyone else!”

They are issued thin diving suits, two dosimeters each (one on the chest, one on the ankle), waterproof flashlights, and a large adjustable spanner—“just in case the valves are stuck.” No full-face respirators, no lead shielding. The suits offer zero protection against gamma radiation; they are there only to keep the water off their skin.

The basement is not a swimming pool of glowing green death as dramatised in popular retellings. Firefighting crews have already pumped out much of the water. The level stands knee- to waist-deep in the corridors. The men walk along overhead pipes where possible to minimise immersion. Their flashlights cut narrow tunnels through the absolute dark. Pipes, valves, debris, and fallen concrete create a deadly obstacle course.

Geiger counters scream continuously.

They move deliberately. Ananenko leads, navigating by memory and touch. Bespalov follows. Baranov brings up the rear with the spare lamp. Every minute spent below adds to their dose. They locate the first valve. Ananenko grips the handwheel. It turns. Then the second.

Suddenly, the sound they will never forget: the roar of millions of litres of radioactive water rushing out through the opened sluice gates into the drainage system.

Ananenko’s own words capture the moment better than any script:
“Everyone at the Chernobyl NPS was watching this operation. When the searchlight beam fell on a pipe, we were joyous: The pipe led to the valves. We heard the rush of water out of the tank. And in a few more minutes we were being embraced by the guys.”

They emerge alive. The immediate crisis is averted. Fire brigade pumps finish draining the remaining 20,000 tonnes by May 8.

The Soviet information machine quickly buried the story. TASS reported the three men had died and been buried in sealed zinc coffins. The legend of the “Chernobyl Suicide Squad” was born—and it stuck.

The 2019 HBO miniseries amplified the myth: divers swimming in total darkness, flashlight dying, certain death. In reality:

Ananenko and Bespalov developed the tell-tale “radioactive tan”—dark pigmentation on their legs from beta burns. They set off every radiation alarm in the decontamination showers, requiring multiple scrubbings. Over the following three years as liquidators, Ananenko accumulated 92 rem—eighteen times the annual occupational limit. Yet none suffered acute radiation syndrome.

Boris Baranov died in 2005 at age 64 from heart disease, unrelated to the mission. Alexei Ananenko and Valery Bespalov are alive as of 2025. In 2018, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko awarded all three the Order for Courage; in 2019 they received the title Hero of Ukraine (posthumously for Baranov). Ananenko still lectures on nuclear safety and remains a staunch advocate for the technology: “Can humanity survive without nuclear power? Of course not.”

The draining bought precious time. The corium eventually dripped into the now-empty pools and cooled into ceramic-like “lava” formations—most famously the Elephant’s Foot in room 305/2, which still emits lethal radiation today. The New Safe Confinement arch, completed in 2016 at a cost of €1.5 billion, now entombs the ruins for the next century.

Yet the human cost of Chernobyl extends far beyond the basement. Roughly 600,000 liquidators cleaned, contained, and entombed the site. Official Soviet figures listed 31 immediate deaths; modern estimates of long-term cancer fatalities range from 4,000 (WHO) to 90,000 (some independent studies). The Red Forest—4 km² of pines turned ginger by radiation—still stands as a silent monument.

Today the 2,600 km² Exclusion Zone has become Europe’s largest inadvertent nature reserve: wolves, lynx, Przewalski’s horses, and even brown bears thrive where humans cannot. Radiation levels in many areas have fallen to background comparable to a transatlantic flight. Chernobyl tourism, carefully managed, now educates thousands annually.

The story is not about three superheroes. It is about three engineers who understood that in a system that had failed catastrophically, someone still had to turn the valve.

Ananenko refuses the hero label. “Someone had to,” he says simply.

In our age of cascading crises—nuclear proliferation, climate tipping points, pandemics—we face the same question they did in that flooded corridor: when the Geiger counter screams and the lights go out, who walks forward?

The difference between a localised tragedy and a continental catastrophe was three men with a wrench, two flashlights, and the willingness to say, “I know where the valves are.”

That willingness still exists. We just have to recognise it before the corium reaches the water.

If this story of unsung courage moved you, hit subscribe—more investigative deep dives land in your inbox every other day. Share this edition with someone who needs reminding that ordinary people still rewrite history. Comment below: What modern “basement valve” do you think humanity must turn next?

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Until the next void,
— Visionary Void