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= Viktor Bryukhanov = Viktor Petrovich Bryukhanov (b. December 1, 1935, Tashkent, USSR) is known for being the manager of construction of Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant and former director of the same from 1970-1986.

Biography
Viktor Bryukhanov was born on December 1, 1935 in the city of Tashkent, Uzbekistan (formerly USSR). Oldest son of the four children, his father used to work as a glazier and his mother was a cleaning lady. He later went on to become the only one his brothers to receive higher education attaining a degree from Energy Department of the Tashkent Polytechnic in electrical engineering in 1959. After graduation, he was offered a job at Academy of Sciences of Uzbekistan. He worked at the Angren Thermal Power Plant in the following positions: duty deaerator installer, driver of feed pumps, assistant turbine driver, turbine driver, senior turbine workshop engineer, shift supervisor and became workshop director a year later.

In 1966, he was invited to work at the  Slavyanskaya Thermal Power Plant. He started as a senior foreman and rose up to the rank of head of workshop and finally, deputy chief engineer, with him resigning in 1970 after someone suggested him to build Chernobyl Station. He was a member of Communist Party of Soviet Union since 1966. Between 1970 and 1986 he was repeatedly elected member of the regional district office of Kiev, Chernobyl and Pripyat city committees of the party.

Viktor met his wife Valentia at Angren Power Plant. Valentia, at that time was an assistant to a turbine engineer, and Viktor was a trainee fresh from the university.

Chernobyl Power Plant Construction
During the late 1960's the energy minister offered Bryukhanov his new assignment which was to build an atomic power plant consisting of 4 RBMK reactors on the banks of the Pripyat, Ukraine. Costing at almost 400 million rubles, Bryukhanov confronted his responsibility for conjuring from an empty field to the greatest project if successful. Bryukhanov started building the infrastructure he would need to bring materials and equipment to the construction site. He organized a temporary village and had a schoolhouse built. In 1970 he was joined in Lesnoy by his wife, six-year-old daughter and infant son. He frequently missed his deadlines due to tight schedule and further adding to it the lack of construction equipment and defective materials. 3 years after assuming the role of director, plant hadn't emerged from the ground. His resignation was torn off by his Party-appointed supervisor from the Energy Ministry in July 1972. Bryukhanov postponed an outstanding time-consuming safety test of reactor #4 so as to meet Moscow's deadline on December 31, 1983. By 1984, all the reactors of the Chernobyl Power Plant (Vladimir I. Lenin) were online and functioning.

The Disaster
After the first explosion, the 1000 ton lid is lifted, air gets into the reactor and with enough oxygen starts a graphite fire. The metal on reacting with water produced hydrogen which exploded. After the second explosion, Alexander Akinhov, the head of the night shift and Anatoly Diatlov, the engineer responsible for industrial management did not believe that an accident had taken place. When somebody claimed the core has exploded, they send out operators to examine the core. These people are killed by radiation. On hearing the report that the reactor has been destroyed Akimov asssured his team that the reactor is OK, Akimov and Diatlov, assisted by manager Bryukhanov and engineer N.Fomin, kept ordering the operators to add more cooling water. They remained convinced that there was nothing wrong. Akimov and Toptunov, who was responsible for the control rods, both died of radiation illness.

Bryukhanov kept denying the explosion of plant based on the data received through Anatoly. At 3:00 AM, the director of the plant, Viktor P. Bryukhanov, contacted Vladimir V. Marin, the official in charge of nuclear matters of the Communist Party at his Moscow home to report the accident and assure officials that the situation was under control.

The Aftermath
While Viktor was on a leave starting from May 22, for a week, officials made arrangements to remove Bryukhanov permanently from his position as director of the power plant. As part of discovery procedures dictated by Soviet Law, investigators bought Viktor the materials they uncovered during course of their inquiries, which were used in a case against him. Viktor also found a letter written by one of the Kurchatov Institute experts, which revealed the perilous design faults that were kept hidden from him and his staff for 16 years.

On January 20, 1987, after Viktor had sat in isolation for 6 weeks, prosecutor's office filed their closing indictment with Supreme Court of USSR. All of the 48 files of evidence sent to Moscow we classified top secret.

Bryukhanov—along with four other senior members of the plant staff, including Dyatlov and Fomin—was charged formally under Article 220, paragraph 2, of the Ukrainian Criminal Code, under which he was accused of "a breach of safety regulations" resulting in loss of life or other serious consequences at "explosion-prone plants or facilities." This was an inventive legal gambit—never before had Soviet jurists considered a nuclear power station an installation likely to explode—and the first of many logical contortions necessary to confine responsibility for the accident to the handful of selected scapegoats." To bolster the case, Brukhanov and Fomin were also charged under Article 165 of the Criminal Code with abuse of power." Brukhanov was accused of deliberately underreporting the radiation readings at the station on the morning of the accident, thereby delaying the evacuation of the station and of Pripyat, and knowingly sending men into the most dangerously contaminated areas of the reactor building. If found guilty, the three most senior members of the plant staff each faced a maximum of ten years in prison. Scheduled to begin on March 18, 1987, the trial was delayed when it became obvious that Deputy Chief Engineer Nikolai Fomin remained too mentally unstable to take the stand." Placed under arrest at the same time as Brukhanov, he had attempted suicide in prison, shattering his spectacles and using the fragments to slash his wrists. While the wretched technician was sent to the hospital to recuperate, the trial was postponed until later in the year. Bryukhanov later admitted to criminal failure in his performance of official duties, which later reduced his sentence to five years in prison.

On July 3, 1986, the decision of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU for the mistakes that led to the Chernobyl disaster Bryukhanov was expelled from the CPSU.

In September 1991, he was released ahead of schedule. After his release, he continued to work at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant as head of the technical department.

Since August 1992, he lives in Desnyansky district of the city of Kiev and he is an employee of the state company "Ukrinterenergo" in charge of liquidating the consequences of the Chernobyl accident.

Family
Wife - Valentina, electrical engineer, in the years 1975-1990 - senior engineer of the production department of Chernobyl, now retired

Son - Oleg (born in 1969), the mechanic automatic CHP-5 management systems from Kiev

Daughter - Lily (born in 1961), a pediatrician, a resident of Kherson

Awards
·        Winner of the Ukrainian Republican Prize (1978)

·        Awards: Order of the Red Banner of Labor (1978)

·        Order of the October Revolution (1983), medals "For Valiant Labor

·        In aznamenavanne 100th anniversary of the birth of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin "and" Veteran of Labor "

·        Honorary Diploma of the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR (1980).

Media
Bryukhanov made his appearance in the documentary Radiofobia.

In the mini-series, Chernobyl (2019),  Con O'Neill played the role of Victor Bryukhanov.