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Biography
Leonid Fedorovych Toptunov was born on the 16 August 1960. He was a Senior Engineer at the Chernobyl Power plant and had this position for 3 months. He graduated from the Moscow Engineering Physics Institute in 1983. He died on the May 14 1986 and his resting place is Mitinskoe Cemetery. Him and the other victims of the disaster were buried in lead coffins that were sealed shut.

Chernobyl
On the 26th of April 1986, Leonid Toptunov was working night shift in reactor 4 where the safety test is supposed to be done. The test should be done according to the safety precautions and how it was done in their training. Anatoly Dyatlov threatened to have staff fired including Toptunov if they didn't do what they were told. He made them drop the power to 200 megawatts instead of 700 to 1000 megawatts as required. Toptunov skipped a step while having control of the reactor, which made the power to lower to almost zero. This made the reactor poisoned. Toptunov tried to shut down the power but the man in charge Anatoly Dyatlov forced him to up the power to 200 megawatts for the safety test.

After the safety test has started, the turbine was turned off causing the pump to push less water into the reactor developing steam and causing heat. The power went up vigorously and Toptunov reported the power surge to Aleksandr Akimov. Akimov had ordered Toptunov to pressed the AZ5 emergency button and this was suppose to shut down the reactor and lower the control rods. The RBMK control rods were made out of boron that and had graphite tips. When this went into the core, the graphite made the power go up instead of lowering it. This caused the reactor core to over heat and explode.

Akimov and Toptunov went to turn the valves manually by hand to pump out feed water to cool down the reactor and prevent a meltdown. By doing this, it exposed them to high amounts of radiation and ended up with radiation sickness. Toptunov's mother had donated a bone marrow to him but it didn't make him better. He died on the 14th of may 1986 at 25 years old from acute radiation syndrome.

Recognition
Leonid Toptunov was played by Volodya Stepanenko in Zero Hour (2004 TV series) "Disaster At Chernoby" and Robert Emms in HBO's Chernobyl. In 2008, Leonid Toptunov was awarded Order For Courage.