Talk:Individual involvement in the Chernobyl disaster

Untitled
Both the Dyatlov and Akimov sections claim that the respective person was the one to press the AZ-5 button, which seems incorrect. Not sure if it is known who pressed it.

This article needs considerable work. People are referred to as if in passing, by last name only, before they are introduced; the order of events is not at all clear; and in at least one instance, the same statement, with only minor changes in punctuation, is repeated within the same paragraph. I have been known to edit Wikipedia for grammar and clarity on many occasions, but I have always tried to limit my contributions to only fixing minor issues. To fix this article, I would need to substantially rewrite the article's structure, and I believe that is a task best left to more experienced and registered users, if not staff editors.170.141.177.61 (talk) 19:19, 14 March 2011 (UTC) Section heading added. jonkerz♠ 19:42, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I say go ahead and make any changes you feel would make the article better. I posted a few link on your talk page. Reading those is preferred (but not required) if you're not familiar with the basic guidelines. The most important of them may be WP:BOLD - be bold! Don't worry too much about the wiki syntax and Wikipedia's manual of style, I or someone else can fix stuff like that later. Happy editing, jonkerz♠ 19:42, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

I copied the table that had been on the "Deaths in the Chernobyl Disaster" page onto this entry, prior to deleting surviving individuals from the "deaths" entry, to eliminate unnecessary overlap. Also, I've updated the information on Aleksandr P. Kovalenko within that table. Based on the acknowledgements in Chernobyl Record: the Definitive History of the Chernobyl Catastrophe by Richard Francis Mould (c. 2000 IOP Publishing Ltd.), the fact of Mr. Kovalenko's conviction, and the fact that a gentleman with the same name & generation is currently employed as DGD at the Russian state-owned energy company Zarubezhneft (http://www.nestro.ru/www/webnew.nsf/index/RukKAP_eng) provide convincing evidence that Kovalenko did not die in the mid-1980's. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Amelia Fotheringay (talk • contribs) 20:50, 18 March 2011 (UTC)


 * There's a photo of Alexander Kovalenko in this PDF here, hosted by Zarubezhneft. I believe the photo was taken in 2013 (it uses the same format as the other photographs; some of the other staff on that page are said to have joined in 2012 and 2013). He looks very fresh-faced for someone who was an official at Chernobyl twenty-six years earlier. Time Magazine's article says that he was 46 years old in 1987, which means that he would be 72 years old in that photo. Could it be that there are two Alexander Kovalenkos who work in the energy industry? -Ashley Pomeroy (talk) 21:30, 16 September 2018 (UTC)


 * In fact he has a bio page here, which says that he graduated in the post-Soviet era and entered the workplace in 1992, so I'm convinced that there are in fact two Alexander Kovalenkos, one who was involved in Chernobyl and one who joined Zarubezhneft. I'll edit the page accordingly. -Ashley Pomeroy (talk) 21:33, 16 September 2018 (UTC)

article based on fiction book?
After studying various documents and books, it seems to me that many facts, events and actions are lifted from the book by G.Medvedev. The book is a literary adaptation, a documentary novel, and does not pretend to be factually accurate. This article on the other hand does. I may point out things which appear to be fiction by Medvedev: And on and on and on, details which can only have been lifted from that book. Personally, I would recommend the article for deletion, but if there are people willing to track down the sources and clean up, please go ahead. Kotika98 (talk) 00:32, 28 April 2014 (UTC)
 * 1)  Perevozchenko witnessing the dance of the 350kg blocks, then  "the destruction of the reactor building from the broken windows of the deaerator gallery".
 * 2) Dyatlov "overrode Akimov's and Toptunov's objections, threatening to hand the shift to Tregub (the previous shift operator who had remained on-site), intimidating them into attempting to increase the reactor power." This has never been alleged even at his criminal trial, only in the book.
 * 3) Again, Dyatlov, "despite seeing the graphite blocks scattered on the ground outside the plant, he still believed the reactor was intact" also directly from the book. The exact same sentence is repeated again lower in the paragraph.
 * 4) Akimov: "He supported Toptunov's decision to shut down the poisoned reactor, but was over-ridden by Dyatlov and forced to continue" Also from the book. Later on:  "the main circulation pumps started cavitating due to the too high temperature of inlet water" this is from the Soviet official report, which was later found to not be the case.


 * Pardon, but can you supply a review or some opinion besides your own that Medvedev's book is fiction? That fact is not recorded anywhere I've looked, including on wikipedia's own page about it.  I would appreciate it.  SkoreKeep (talk) 16:00, 28 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Pardon, but can you supply a review or some opinion besides your own that Medvedev's book is fiction? That fact is not recorded anywhere I've looked, including on wikipedia's own page about it.  I would appreciate it.  SkoreKeep (talk) 16:00, 28 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Hello. I stumbled upon on few comments on youtube from a guy by the name of Вован, he seems to know a lot about this topic and he provided some sources on why that stuff about Dyatlov in Medvedev's book seems made up. But the sources are in russian, so I can't verify them well and besides that, I don't know what sources should wikipedia deem more important if they somehow contradict themselves. I'm going to copy the part of his comment that seemed most important to me: "https://www.litmir.me/br/?b=139550&p=10 - Chernobyl by Scherbak, memories of Yuri Tregub who was in the control room. No mention of any argues. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPRyciXh07k&t=403s" In the video, they seem to be asking Stolyarchuk (who, as far as I found, was in the control room aswell) directly about any argument. Maybe some competent editor will find this useful. Trefan9999 (talk) 13:27, 28 May 2019 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 4 external links on Individual involvement in the Chernobyl disaster. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20100820124650/http://pripyat.com/en/publications/2008/12/29/1979.html to http://pripyat.com/en/publications/2008/12/29/1979.html
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20110103114601/http://www.krasnogorsk.ru/index.php?do=static&page=patriot.kp.chaes to http://www.krasnogorsk.ru/index.php?do=static&page=patriot.kp.chaes
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20100820124650/http://pripyat.com/en/publications/2008/12/29/1979.html to http://pripyat.com/en/publications/2008/12/29/1979.html
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20100501143615/http://pripyat.com/ru/publications/version/2005/06/23/202.html to http://pripyat.com/ru/publications/version/2005/06/23/202.html
 * Added tag to http://www.pomnimih.ru/info.php?categ=8&subcateg=76&id=27

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 11:57, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

Possible citogenesis
I noticed that the source for the claim for "Scientists believe that once the reactor melted through its concrete slab and plunged into the accumulated water, the resulting steam explosion would have released much more radiation into the atmosphere than the original explosion" has a citation for the book "Catastrophe: A Guide to World's Worst Industrial Disasters". There is a single review on Google Books, and it claims that the book has been plagiarized from Wikipedia.

I haven't read that book myself, but it's worth looking into.

66.109.211.150 (talk) 02:52, 13 June 2019 (UTC)

Time to rework this article and remove inaccurate information
I am planning on a purge of inaccurate, unsourced and fictionalized information from this page, replacing it with sourced eyewitness testimony where possible. The deletions may cause some excitement, so let's talk about it here first. Primarily, most of the material paraphrasing G. Medevedev's book needs to be deleted, where it cites no sources of its own and where it conflicts with directly quoted testimony by eyewitnesses. This will result in excising most of Dyatlov's section, as well as the well-known 'jumping fuel caps' scene in Perevozchenko's section. Is everyone OK with a proper hierarchy of sources where books quoting eyewitnesses are given more weight than discredited books that cite no sources?2604:6000:9F00:6200:746F:35E7:4742:62CD (talk) 02:25, 29 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Alright, I have begun the (eventual) overhaul by reworking the Dyatlov section with citations from his book, Karpan's book and eyewitness statements from Tregub and Stolyarchuk.2604:6000:9F00:6200:69EC:4D:7956:6B7C (talk) 01:22, 6 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Most prominently, I have removed the account of the 'jumping fuel caps' allegedly witnessed by Perevozchenko. If anyone is curious about this, I will post Yuvchenko's written refutation of this story, for which absolutely no primary source evidence exists (it is apparently an invention of Medvedev).2604:6000:9F00:6200:69EC:4D:7956:6B7C (talk) 01:33, 6 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Head's up, more edits were made to 'control the spread of misinformation' regarding visits to the open reactor core which are apocryphal. No time for proper citations at the moment, feel free to quiz me on the primary sources here.67.244.33.136 (talk) 04:04, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

Inaccurate units
1000 milliRoentgen per second are not 3.6 Roentgen per hour, they equal 3600 Roentgen per hour. About 500 Roentgen are fatal for humans. 1000 mikroRoentgen per second (μR/s) might have been meant instead of milliRoentgen, which would fit 3.6 Roentgen per hour. Also note that the "per second" (written in the sentence before) is missing at 1000 μR/s. (Without a "per second", 1R=3.6R per hour would make even less sense.) At the moment, the article's units are incorrect. --129.13.156.135 (talk) 12:12, 19 August 2019 (UTC)
 * It is likely that the dosimeters where either maxed at 1000 μR/s or at 1 R/h. Any other interpretation makes it unlikely to "underestimate radiation levels" by "instrument limitations" as this article states. Following this, several units in this article are likely incorrect (my best guess is, that all mR/s are actually μR/s). --129.13.156.135 (talk) 12:34, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

Concerned about the use of Dyatlov's book at a repeated citation
When reviewing the citations used throughout the article to do my edits, I noticed that almost all of the citations for Anatoly Dyatlov's section are from his own book, which I feel should be updated. While it is certain that some information in the book will be factual, any claims made in this article should also be backed up by the IAEA INSAG-7 report into the disaster, as well as the Central Committee Chernobyl Commission reports into the disaster, as they also use the testimonies of other people present in the room that night, and many of those testimonies conflict with the claims Dyatlov made in his book.

BigBoiiLeem (talk) 11:24, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

BigBoiiLeem, I'm just a huge nerd who loves editing Wikipedia pages in his spare time

I think you will find that are very few conflicts with Dyatlov's tesimony, but certainly feel free to cite other eyewitnesses. So long as we don't cite books that fail to cite any sources at all. Sredmash (talk) 00:46, 16 September 2021 (UTC)