Books - Russia Nuclear Disaster

Product Description:
As the Cold War drew to a close, a Soviet submarine armed with fifteen nuclear missiles suffered a crippling accident, coming within moments of an apocalyptic meltdown that could have devastated the eastern seaboard of the United States. Although our own government-all the way up to the White House-was fully aware of the potential for disaster, they buried the facts, deciding to protect the American public from the truth...but not from the danger.

Now, for the first time, in the words of the survivors, the whole story is told-a minute-by-minute, heartbeat-by-heartbeat account of the underwater terror and top-secret, top-level intrigue. From the military command centers of both the U.S. and Soviet Union to the bridge of the stricken sub itself, you'll share in a riveting true chronicle of courage, deception, and senseless death.


Amazon.com Review:
During the Cold War, Soviet nuclear submarines tirelessly patrolled the Atlantic. Their missiles took aim at Washington, New York, and other major American cities. But they were also fairly low-tech contraptions, at least in comparison to the sophisticated U.S. subs that quietly tracked them. In 1986, one of these Soviet vessels nearly suffered a meltdown not far from Bermuda in what might have been a worse-than-Chernobyl accident. Hostile Waters tells this story more like a novel than a textbook, but also makes good use of declassified material and personal interviews. In his brief foreword, Tom Clancy calls it "one of the most fascinating true submarine stores I have ever encountered"--high praise from the man who brought us The Hunt for Red October.



Customer Review: Reads like a novel...unfortunately:
The Russian nuclear powered, missile carrying (SSBN) submarine K-219 was about 15 years old when it nearly triggered either WWIII or a 2nd Chernobyl. In 1986, with Chernobyl still in minds of the public, and the Reagan/Gorbachev summit in Reykjavik imminent, the navies of both sides of the cold war sail SSBN's off each other's shore. Floating platforms loaded with numerous missiles - some with multiple warheads - these subs are almost as dangerous to their crews as they are to the enemy. In the case of K-219, the balance shifted firmly against the crew. Poor design, construction and shipyard maintenance had prematurely aged the sub launched only a few years earlier than the first 688-class American subs. Near Bermuda, K-219 was nearly sunk by a missile explosion caused by leaking seawater. With one tube already deactivated because of seawater problems on a prior cruise, this was not a new problem. In this case however, the explosion nearly sinks the then submerged boat, then floods it with toxic and corrosive gas. Problems increase when the ships two reactors suffer a loss-of-coolant accident and nearly meltdown. Echoing the experience of K-19, some brave crewmen sacrifice themselves to shut the reactors down. Complications ensue when superiors in Moscow order the crew (once safely evacuated to a nearby freighter) to re-board the poisoned ship. An American sub with a maverick commander adds to the danger when he runs his ship too near the stricken sub, apparently ordered to keep K-219 from being recovered. Eventually, the ship will sink, and Captain Britanov will have to return home and answer to his superiors for the loss of the sub.

The loss of K-219 is a fascinating story, but unfortunately this book doesn't do it justice. The most crucial of the book's flaws is the author's determination to write it as if it were a novel, with a single, linear narrative explaining the events surrounding K-219, complete with stilted, cold-war standard dialog and sub-standard characterization. Incidents that occur in the real world will be remembered through the perspectives of those who witnessed it - and those perspectives will vary depending on the position of the witness and any numerous other factors which may affect personal bias. The fact that people will have distinct memories or opinions about past occurrences is neither wrong nor right, good or bad - it's just the way that things are. What people saw, or remember (or are willing to say) is only part of the story - we still need to know why people people acted the way they did, and how that colors their recollection, and most importantly, we need to know whose recollections are being used by the author at any one time. Instead, "Hostile waters" offers a single, linear perspective, one with easily identifiable heroes and villains (the political officer is singled out for unpopularity even before he grabs the first lifeboat off K-219 - since he does nothing throughout the story he's an easy target). This is not only a monumental cheat, but also robs the reader of critical facts - such as what really caused the ship to sink as it did; also the circumstances surrounding the apparently feckless captain of the American sub, and whether any blame should attach to K-219's skipper for not knowing of the leaking missile tube or the painful domestic situation of the officer directly responsible for monitoring it. "Hostile Waters" reads like a novel - a very unrealistic one.

Customer Review: Reads like a novel...unfortunately:
The Russian nuclear powered, missile carrying (SSBN) submarine K-219 was about 15 years old when it nearly triggered either WWIII or a 2nd Chernobyl. In 1986, with Chernobyl still in minds of the public, and the Reagan/Gorbachev summit in Reykjavik imminent, the navies of both sides of the cold war sail SSBN's off each other's shore. Floating platforms loaded with numerous missiles - some with multiple warheads - these subs are almost as dangerous to their crews as they are to the enemy. In the case of K-219, the balance shifted firmly against the crew. Poor design, construction and shipyard maintenance had prematurely aged the sub launched only a few years earlier than the first 688-class American subs. Near Bermuda, K-219 was nearly sunk by a missile explosion caused by leaking seawater. With one tube already deactivated because of seawater problems on a prior cruise, this was not a new problem. In this case however, the explosion nearly sinks the then submerged boat, then floods it with toxic and corrosive gas. Problems increase when the ships two reactors suffer a loss-of-coolant accident and nearly meltdown. Echoing the experience of K-19, some brave crewmen sacrifice themselves to shut the reactors down. Complications ensue when superiors in Moscow order the crew (once safely evacuated to a nearby freighter) to re-board the poisoned ship. An American sub with a maverick commander adds to the danger when he runs his ship too near the stricken sub, apparently ordered to keep K-219 from being recovered. Eventually, the ship will sink, and Captain Britanov will have to return home and answer to his superiors for the loss of the sub.

The loss of K-219 is a fascinating story, but unfortunately this book doesn't do it justice. The most crucial of the book's flaws is the author's determination to write it as if it were a novel, with a single, linear narrative explaining the events surrounding K-219, complete with stilted, cold-war standard dialog and sub-standard characterization. Incidents that occur in the real world will be remembered through the perspectives of those who witnessed it - and those perspectives will vary depending on the position of the witness and any numerous other factors which may affect personal bias. The fact that people will have distinct memories or opinions about past occurrences is neither wrong nor right, good or bad - it's just the way that things are. What people saw, or remember (or are willing to say) is only part of the story - we still need to know why people people acted the way they did, and how that colors their recollection, and most importantly, we need to know whose recollections are being used by the author at any one time. Instead, "Hostile waters" offers a single, linear perspective, one with easily identifiable heroes and villains (the political officer is singled out for unpopularity even before he grabs the first lifeboat off K-219 - since he does nothing throughout the story he's an easy target). This is not only a monumental cheat, but also robs the reader of critical facts - such as what really caused the ship to sink as it did; also the circumstances surrounding the apparently feckless captain of the American sub, and whether any blame should attach to K-219's skipper for not knowing of the leaking missile tube or the painful domestic situation of the officer directly responsible for monitoring it. "Hostile Waters" reads like a novel - a very unrealistic one.

Customer Review: innacurate research?:
As one of the authors of Hostile Waters, I skim through now and again to read comments left by readers. I was very surprised to see D. Epstein's odd claim that the book was "technically inaccurate." This book was researched long, hard and very well, using both Russian and US sources, including first-person accounts and the testimony of survivors. Epstein alleges that we goofed by claiming the USS AUGUSTA collided with K-219 and yet, somehow, did not sink. Epstein says that US boats are single hulled (true) and have but one internal compartment (not true...there are two, or even three if you count the sonar sphere). He claims that a flooding casualty anywhere aboard the AUGUSTA woould have doomed her, thus, could not have happened.
Yet nowhere in the book do we claim, ever, that AUGUSTA collided with K-219. AUGUSTA did suffer a glancing collision with a second Soviet unit in the vicinity, and limped home to Groton for repairs. The angle, speed and energy state of the two boats dictated the results. The inherent toughness of US SSN design saved the day, as it did recently when the USS SAN FRANCISCO slammed head-on into a seamount, crushing the bow, Yet she did not go down; a testament to our design philosophy, and the training of our crews.
Epstein claims he found a second error: that when K-219 struck the bottom she did not implode "because she was already flooded." Actually, she was mostly filled with water, but two compartments retained their pressure to the very end and resisted the sea all the way down. One of them trapped a sailor, who could not overcome the pressure to make good his escape. The clanky old K-219 retained enough structural integrity to make a subsequent salavage visit quite difficult: the muzzle hatches on her silos were down and locked, and required a great deal of effort to pry open.
Soviet submarines were built to a high strength margin. But they were filled with second and third-rate systems, and contained designed-in traps that would, again and again, prove lethal to their crews.
Perhaps Epstein is remembering the movie, Hostile Waters, and not the book?



Customer Review: Hostile Waters:
Very poorly researched and technically inaccurate. I read this book several years ago and was astounded by the technical impossibilities which were treated as fact. Here are two. 1)The USS Agusta is allegeded to have suffered flooding in several equipment bays and compartments after the collision with the K-219.Fact: US submarines are all single-hulled and there are no spaces to flood other than the few major compartments, and if one compartment floods the affected crew will drown or be crushed and the submarine will likely be lost as well (killing the rest of the crew). Simply put there are no tiny little spaces to flood. Leaks can occur but either they are patched or the submarine fills with water. 2)As the K-219 sank she hit bottom without imploding. The Captain of the USS Agusta is alleged to have said "They build them well in Russia". This is pure garbage. The reason K-219 didn't implode is that she was already filled with water before she reached crush depth, which for an American submarine would be no deeper than about 2,000 feet (and probably much less- Los Angeles class boats had thinner hulls than earlier American SSNs, to save weight, and were allegedly limited to 900 feet for operational purposes, and "crush depth"- where simple physics says the submarine will implode from pressure- is certainly less than 2X operational depth limits) and perhaps for a Soviet submarine maybe a few hundred feet deeper- they were thicker hulled than US submarines as a rule. Only a very thickly-hulled purpose-designed research submarine can dive so deeply without collapsing. These are just two extremely glaring technical defficiencies of this book which suggest that the book is more fabricated than researched. Someone, *please*. tell me how a missile boat experiencing a *convential* explosion breaching her hull, and then possibly suffering a reactor failure could have come close to precipitating World War III?????

Customer Review: Intense!:
An explosion on a Russian nuclear submarine carrying fifteen rockets with thirty thermonuclear warheads too close to the shores of the United States could have the worst of consequences despite the valiant struggles of the sub's captain and crew. The action in this true story is nonstop as the book keeps the reader on a razor's edge between the nearly unsolvable problem that must be fixed even at the cost of lives and careers and the unthinkable option of a global catastrophe. First find a comfortable chair then kick back because you aren't going to be able to put this one down until the very end.

Product Description:

On April 26, 1986, Reactor #4 at the V. I. Lenin Nuclear Power Plant near Chernobyl exploded, releasing 400 times more radioactive matter than the bombing of Hiroshima. Igor Kostin, then a reporter for the Novosti Agency, took the very first photograph of the accident, continuing to endure massive radiation overexposure to document the disaster for the International Atomic Energy Agency. For the next twenty years he persistently investigated the explosion's effects on mankind and the environment.

This never-seen-before photographic collection tells the incredible stories of liquidators, soldiers, scientists, and residents throughout Belarus, Ukraine, Russia, Latvia, Germany, Sweden, and France that have been socially, politically, and medically impacted by the catastrophe, creating a global perspective of the tragedy. With a distance of 20 years this spring, Chernobyl: Confession of a Reporter sparks timely debate over the health and sociological implications of current global energy policies.

Igor Kostin, born in Moldava in 1936, is a laureate of the most distinguished international prizes including five World Press Photo, a contributor to Time, Newsweek, Paris-Match, Liberation, and Stern. Kostin lives and works in Kiev, 50 kilometers from Chernobyl.

Customer Review: A singularly compelling visual glimpse into the heart and aftermath of tragedy.:
Written by prizewinning journalist Igor Kostin, who braved severe radiation to take the only existing photograph of the Chernobyl plant on the day of its catastrophic destruction, Chernobyl: Confessions of a Reporter is a compilation of black-and-white and color photographs that Kostin continued to take for twenty years of the plant, the forbidden zone surrounding it, and the people who worked there. For the first time, Kostin presents Chernobyl's story in words as well as pictures, yet it is the photographs that utterly dominate Chernobyl: Confessions of a Reporter, captured images ranging from men transporting radioactive blocks with their naked hands to the evacuation of villages and the construction of the sacrophagus. A singularly compelling visual glimpse into the heart and aftermath of tragedy.

Customer Review: Awful:
I've read many books on the subject of the Chernobyl accident, and I've seen references to this title pop up every now and then. It only seemed natural for me to read it.

With a couple of exceptions, this book is a complete waste of time.

This book's main offense is the author, who seems to be completely unable or unwilling to write from a neutral point of view. Having written many general-interest books and articles on the dangers of nuclear power, nuclear testing, and nuclear proliferation, Glen Alan Cheney pounces on every opportunity to throw in a gratuitous attack on every subject dealing with nuclear industry. While Chernobyl was a catastrophic event, florid descriptions of the world's plight on every other page are unnecessary, and insulting to the reader's intelligence.
Perhaps even worse is Cheney's attitude to his host country and its populace. Every description of a place, person, or action is seasoned with a snide remark, thrown in for no apparent reason other than to add further despair and misery to his narrative. Most telling is the fact that the author is completely unwilling to even attempt to learn the local language, and is proud of it! In this, Cheney is the stereotypical "American tourist."
Lastly, Cheney travels to Ukraine more than seven years after the disaster with a complete ignorance of the events that occurred, the medical and ecological consequences of the radioactive fallout, the government's response to the accident, or really anything pertaining to Chernobyl. One does not have to read between the lines to detect this ignorance; his words say exactly that - in black and white - right in the first chapter. Personally, I prefer to read books written by people who are smarter and more knowledgeable than me on the given subject.

The above reasons cause one to lose all confidence in the author's objectivity, which can make the actual information contained in the book untrustworthy. In general terms, his stories are consistent with information available from other sources, so I have no reason to doubt the broad strokes of Cheney's narrative. However, any specific information present in the book is not given from a position of authority and becomes utterly worthless for the purposes of research.

Not recommended.

If anyone wants my copy, feel free to ask.

Customer Review: Perspective, clarity, honesty:
Glenn Cheney's voice raises questions, exposes uncomfortable truths, and propels the reader into forbidden places, from the recesses of his own brain to the Prohibited Zone near the reactor. Three stories are going on here -- the meltdown of the nuclear reactor, the meltdown of life for those around the reactor, and the reaction of a journalist from somewhere else. Read this book.

Customer Review: Easy, fun reading!:
If you are interested in what the Ukraine was like during the collapse of the Soviet Union, this is the book to read. The author takes you through a 'diary,' a 1st person view of his experience with the aftermath of the accident, coupled with the collapse of the Soviet Union. The book is interesting, and fun to read. I would recommend this to anyone who is interested in the Chernobyl accident.

Customer Review: An American in a Nuclear World:
After reading a few reviews about this book elsewhere, I was eager to give it a read. On paper, the concept is intriguing: an American visiting Kiev in the days right after the Soviet Union ceased to exist, styling himself as a journalist and researcher, and attempting to unravel some of the horrifying mysteries and secrets surrounding the April 1986 Chernobyl disaster.

Cheney's good to his word: he goes to Kiev and he investigates Chernobyl. The resulting book is most disappointing, however, in spite of Cheney's engaging style of writing.

For one thing, it's hard to get past what appears to be a great deal of callousness and cultural insensitivity. The visit took place in the end of 1991, so we're treated to more commentary than necessary on the evils of Communism and the Soviet system, the blessings of capitalism, and how the American government would never, ever allow its citizens to be exposed to that much radiation. At times Cheney veers into full-out Ugly American Tourist mode. He's offended and reacts rudely when he learns that a visit to the Chernobyl reactor will cost money--he thinks he should be able to go for free, permits be damned. He shortchanges a shopkeeper. At one point, he complains that the signs in the Metro are in Cyrillic...gee, in Kiev who would ever expect that?

The book is peppered with uncomplimentary descriptions of the people Cheney meets. A taxi driver who showers Cheney with kindness is "ugly." The flight attendants on Aeroflot: "babushkas in training." The patients in one hospital's cancer ward are insensitively described as "half-dead children," and Cheney photographs them without even trying to learn their names or think of them as actual people. There are endless criticisms on the clothing, the hair, the style of the locals: in one instance, Cheney claims that he only respects a top scientist's data because the man is able to afford a respectable Western suit. He pokes fun of Russian pronunciations of English words, such as "business," and is critical of the locals' lack of English prowess (gee, why doesn't everyone speak English in Ukraine and Russia? You mean they have their own languages there?!), but can't be bothered to learn a word of the local languages himself. Although the locals shower him with help and hospitality, the only thing he can think to tell the "folks back home" about Ukrainians is that they wear the same clothes every day.

While Cheney does offer some stunning write-ups of his encounters with Chernobyl insiders, and gives a helpful summary of the difference between rads, curies and rontengens, even these leave the reader cold. The stories of the liquidators are brushed off, and, even in the face of cancer wards and numerous statements about the vast amount of radioactive material contaminating the country, people who claim there are thousands of victims are described as being "lying or hysterical." The sarcophagus that covers the demolished Reactor Four, with its nuclear payload, was build shoddily because the people constructing it "didn't care to do it properly" (I suppose the fact that all the robots and machines were, you know, malfunctioning because of the radiation, the fact that people working there were made seriously ill by being so close to the reactor and many sacrificed their lives to the cause, and the fact that they were in a hurry to try to contain the radiation as quickly as possible didn't have anything to do with it--nope, they just didn't give a damn!). When Cheney makes the callous comment that he looks as though he's "dying of radiation poisoning" when--gasp!--he's had to go through the day with only one meal!--the reader realizes he just doesn't get it, and he's not going to get it.

Although Cheney's book purports to be an expose of the Chernobyl crisis, perhaps it's important for another reason: it's a direct account of how, even in the face of massive evidence, people both inside and out of the USSR felt perfectly willing to ignore and deliberately disregard the impact of Chernobyl and its staggering number of casualties.

For an accurate look at the human face of the Chernobyl disaster, I'd point people toward Svetlana Alexievich's amazing "Voices from Chernobyl." I'd only recommend this book to those who have already read up on the disaster and know the story.

Product Description:
Grigori Medvedev, a former chief engineer at Chernobyl, was commissioned by the Soviets to investigate the nuclear accident that took place on April 26, 1986. This is Medvedev's own minute-by-minute account of both the disaster and the cover-up.



Customer Review: Misinformation:
This is the same "documentary" book Medvedev publushed in Russian in 1989. Quite entertaining, but also quite confusing and often misinforming where it touches on the causes of the disaster. It follows the official line of putting all the blame on the station personnel ("thankfully", most of the shift personnel died soon after the catastrophe from radiation sickness). It almost completely sidetracks the real cause: the faulty reactor design which made it uncontrollable under the circumstances.

If you feel confused when reading about "operational reactivity reserve" -- don't be. The author is either confused himself, or is trying (not very successfully) to cover the inadequacies of the official analysis. Too bad the Anatoly Dyatlov's book (the deputy chief engineer, one of the few first-hand participants who lived long enough to write about the disaster) wasn't ever translated from Russian.


Customer Review: "Science Requires Victims.":
In "The Truth About Chernobyl" Grigori Medvedev, Soviet nuclear scientist and technical insider, provides a first person insider's perspective into the destruction of the Chernobyl Number Four reactor in April, 1986. The account has been translated into English and no doubt loses some of its nuance in the translation. As it is, it is a gripping account from a man who knew many of the key players and had himself formerly been a senior engineer at the Chernobyl plant.

The book reads like a first-person system safety book: it details the chain of errors and design shortcomings that led to the disaster, explaining the significance of each. Subsequent to the accident, Medvedev then goes on to discuss the heroism displayed by operators, firefighters, helicopter pilots, and others in the aftermath of the disaster. The book has a technical bent, and while it often explains things in prose that can be grasped by non-technical lay readers, it frequently fails to define terms or provide important background information about nuclear plant components or radiation science. Certainly the text would have benefited from a chapter defining terms and explaining the components, and illustrations would have certainly helped the reader grasp the key points that were sometimes elusive. Along these same lines is the use of English abbreviations for obscure Soviet directorates (e.g. "Yuzhatomenergomontazh," "Glavstroy," "Soyuzatomenergo," etc.), which made the actual lines of communication and chain of command very confusing.

The book has many strong points, the single biggest of which is Medvedev's personal knowledge of the station and the personnel involved. As such it is certainly worth reading, but understand that much time has elapsed since the book was written, and some parts of the book, most particularly casualty numbers and rates, are contradicted by more recent epidemiological studies. The book is an excellent indictment of the Soviet nuclear industry, and RBMK type plants in particular. While I consider myself pragmatically pro-nuclear power, there is no question that RBMK plants such as Chernobyl were designed and built to much more lax safety standards than plants in any of the western countries: the lack of a reinforced containment building is but one of the intrinsic and troubling differences. The book is correct in pointing out faulty assumptions and very poor safety culture in the Soviet nuclear industry at the time, and as such the book stands as a vital volume in any professional safety library.

The Soviet reaction to the disaster was initially to hide factual information from the public about the seriousness of the hazards involved, causing a further public health calamity. The chairman of the State Committee on the Use of Nuclear Power, A.M. Petrosyants, went as far as to say that "science requires victims" as a justification for the accident and the communist government's reaction to it. Medvedev accurately noted (p.205) "He thought this was a very intelligent remark, but it really sounded blasphemous and stupid. People were dying." This kind of distillation of the issues to the most elemental level distinguishes this book among its peers, and makes it worth reading.

Customer Review: Good, but it could have been great.:
This book has fantastic first person accounts of the Chernobyl disaster by people who watched it happen, and was written by a man intimately familiar with the power plant, the people involved and the response to the disaster. It gives great insight into the personalities that shaped the events leading up to the disaster, and opens the door to places and events we would otherwise be ignorant of. What this book doesn't have is a solid narrative, illustrations to assist with descriptions of the plant and it's environs or good explanations of the technical aspects of nuclear power - even when an understanding of such matters would be crucial to comprehend what he is describing.
Mr. Medvedev did a great job in creating this account but he was failed by his editor and translator.

Customer Review: Informative and Enjoyable:
I really enjoyed this book. As a teenager with a morbid interest in nuclear accidents like Chernobyl, Medvedev gave a perfect amount of detail and information while making his account readable. This book is very well-written, which I didn't expect when I checked it out. It reads almost like a novel rather than like a non-fiction book. However, like others have said, it doesn't give a lot of definition for things like nuclear measurements (I must admit, I looked for a glossary when I saw the word "roetgen").

All in all, a great book and a pleasant surprise.

Customer Review: "Counting lives" meant "killing people":
Those who wish to hide the truth delight
in creating new vocabulary to hide behind.
On p 234, Medvedev writes:

"...the phrase 'counting lives' had
acquired a new meaning." The meaning
was the number of men to be killed
in a procedure being considered.

However, I was disappointed he didn't
mention "bio-robots," the euphemism for
men sent to handle the fuel rods w/o
any protection.

I agree with other reviews that the
author (a) is a good writer and the
story moves right along, and (b) he
assumes that the readers knows a bit
more about nuclear measurements than
most of us do.

Product Description:
Provides historical scientific record of the events leading up to and the aftermath of Chernobyl. Includes eye-witness records and an extensively illustrated documentary.



Customer Review: Chernobyl Record by R.F Mould:
A very informative book, well written.
Amazon delivered it 10 days earlier than promised. Well done!

Customer Review: Very Informative, But Hardly Definitive:
I approached Dr. Mould's book "Chernobyl Record" with some trepidation, as I read some reviews that characterized it as unabashedly pro-nuclear. However, I did not really detect such a bias. Some claim that Mould downplays the effects of radiation, but I don't see how. He uses plenty of data to support his claims, and he hardly glosses over the horrible effects of radiation. But I think I am more apt to believe his claim that Chernobyl was the "greatest psychological disaster in history," in that many of the effects in people outside the exclusion zone and the Kiev area were psychosomatic, tied to their fear of the effects of radiation. I am not trying to downplay Chernobyl's consequences, which are huge, but compared to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, its effects were less in magnitude and scope. However, even if some effects are only psychological, these too are quite sad and often as bad as the physical effects. The accident has led to economic problems in Ukraine, including high unemployment, and the displacement of a large number of people, and these factors all lead to a high rate of depression and alcoholism among many Ukrainians, including the survivors and liquidators.

"Chernobyl Record" provides an excellent inroduction to the Chernobyl accident, explaining all of the necessary terminology on radiation and nuclear reactors. However, it does kind of speed through the accident itself, and for in-depth accounts of the actual accident, one will have to look elsewhere, such as Grigori Medvedev's The Truth About Chernobyl. It is to books such as Medvedev's that one will also have to turn to for a detailed account fo the heroism of many of the firefighters and operators involved in cleaning and containing the accident.

The photos (both in color and black and white) in Mould's book are quite invaluable as well, including many of the interior of the Sarcophagus, the town of Pripyat, and of radiation victims from Chernobyl.

The biggest problem with the book is that Mould concentrates primarily on the aftermath and consequences of the accident. This information is quite helpful and relatively up-to-date (2000), but some of the data on the effects on wildlife and foodstuffs are less interesting than the human aspects of the story. However, concluding with V. Legasov's "Testament" was an excellent way of bringing the human element back into focus.

Overall, then, this book will prove indispensable for anyone interested in Chernobyl. However, as it was published in 2000, it is already outdated, since the effects of Chernobyl continue to be studied and there are plans to bulid another structure over Unit No. 4 and the Sarcophagus. Chernobyl still awaits its definitive history, but it is sad to think that so many people have forgotten Chernobyl. There are several lessons in nuclear safety to be learnt from the accident that can be extracted from this excellent book. Nuclear power is not something to be taken lightly, and this book is a sobering reminder of that fact.

Product Description:

The Soviet nuclear submarine K-19 was the pride of the Soviet Navy, but on July 4, 1961, during its maiden voyage to the North Atlantic for war games, it suddenly and unexpectedly developed a serious leak in one of the reactors. In a race against time, the officers and crew worked desperately and brilliantly, under intense exposure to radiation, to improvise a coolant system, averting a Chernobyl-like nuclear disaster. The toll for their efforts was certain and devastating: Eight men died painful deaths from acute radiation poisoning within days of the accident, and the surviving crew returned home to await their unknowable fate.

Featuring a complete history of the actual events, with passages from the submarine captain’s memoir, and rarely published historic images, K-19 places readers at the apex of the Cold War’s brinkmanship between the USSR and the United States. It is the companion book to the upcoming National Geographic feature film about this gripping tragedy, K-19: The Widowmaker, starring Harrison Ford and Liam Neeson. Including information on the making of the film, with production stills, and cutaway drawings of the submarine, this powerful volume combines authoritative history and the magic of moviemaking to give the reader the real backstory to K-19.

Customer Review: Shallow exploration of Soviet submarines:
I'd already seen the movie, but picked up this book figuring I'd get the true story behind the movie. Unfortunately, though the book does get the history behind the story, it's information value isn't that much more substantive than the feature film.

The True Story: K-19 was the Soviets' first SSBN - nuclear-powered, ballistic missile sub. Like their USN counterparts, Soviet SSBN's of K-19's "Hotel" class were really modified attack subs. (Unfortunately, the Russians were a generation behind in nuclear sub technology: American SSBN's were based on the Skipjack class, a second generation SSN, while Hotels were modified versions of the "November" class - the very first Soviet SSN.) Particulars aside, K-19 suffered a series of maladies endemic to the Soviets' military-industrial complex, not the least of which were design flaws in its nuclear powerplant. In the heady days of the early 1960's, the Soviets were forced to relax their standards in order to field any nuclear powered ships which were unreliable, unsafe and loud enough to allow easy detection by western ships. As a result, the history of Soviet nuclear subs is a catalog of nuclear accidents, shoddy design and maintenance, poor training and morale, and numerous radiation related injuries and deaths. The feature film "K-19" depicted a fictionalized version of K-19's maiden voyage in which the ship's reactor suffered a catastrophic coolant leak and nearly exploded. A breakdown of crew morale nearly led to a mutiny, but the ship eventually made port, was refitted, and returned to sea. Future patrols of K-19 were similarly marked by near catastrophe - including a fire that trapped some of the crew in one darkened compartment for over three weeks. Ironically, K-19 survived these maladies while other ships went to the bottom, taking many crewmen with them. Soviet authorities cover these accidents up (reports try to shift blame to the crews; injuries from radiation exposure are typically masked as stress-related).

But we knew all of that. Well, we didn't know many details, but the story of the soviet navy as one beset by incompetence, cover-ups and nuclear accidents is an old one, the grist of Tom Clancy novels of a distant era. This book, which includes the memoirs of Nikolai Zateyev, who commanded K-19 on its infamous 1961 patrol, adds little to the lore of the hidden Soviet naval history, and amounts to little more than a thick addendum to books like "Blind Man's Bluff". We get names of many in the Soviet hierarchy, and many anecdotes of Soviet engineering blunders, but again, these are old stories fleshed out with some names. Because its not clear how many of these episodes were witnessed by Zatayev, it's unclear just how useful his memoirs are as a firsthand record of systemic problems in the Soviet navy. At about 211 pages, including a digest of Russian naval accidents, "K-19" is no heavy read, and I finished it off in a little more than a day. (The digest is largely redundant - since the text of "K-19" already recounts many of these accidents; an afterword by "K-19" director Kathryn Bigelow, and an insert of pictures of both the real K-19 and from the feature film further plump up the book's weight.) Hunting the depths of this book gave me the sense that the author gave up trying to get the real story of K-19, and decided to make up for lost text by simply recounting many already documented incidents (like collisions between Russian subs and American ships like the USS Voge and the submarine USS Gato, as well as the loss of the subs Komsomolets, K-219 and K-129) brought again to public attention with the 1998 publication of "Blind Man's Bluff". In short, if you've read any histories of cold war submarines, Soviet or Western, this book will likely add little to your understanding.

Customer Review: Recommended:
This book gives you the real story behind the dramatization presented in the motion picture: K-19: The Widowmaker. More than just a companion piece, the book provides passages from a diary maintained by the captain of K-19, extensive research materials on the incident itself as well as the Cold War Soviet Union conditions and motivations that contributed to the incident.

If that were not enough, a wealth of information is provided on other (known) incidents involving Soviet/Russian nuclear naval vessels/projects. Starting just after WWII and continuing up to the loss of the Kursk in Nov 2001, the bravery of the Russian sailors, the alarming loss of life and the environmental impact is well documented.

Customer Review: Too many pages:
This book has 211 pages and some addendums that you can read or not depending on the mood you will be at the end of the book, so we will only count the 211 pages of the story.
The first 112 pages will tell you how to build a nuclear submarine and some tips on how to maneuver it. If you want to learn to do this it is fine to read it, but I think that if you only read this book to know how to build the nuclear sub you might find some trouble doing it.
The next 50 pages is the real story of what happened to the K-19 and it is interesting what was going on at the sub.
The last part of the book tells us why that happened to the sub and tells us that the Russians didn't learn anything about this accident and maybe they had the same failure at Chernovil.
So, if you read from page 112 and read about 70 pages you will get the story.

Customer Review: The hidden side of the Russian navy:
Normally I don't like reading books that are then used in movies. If the movie follows the book too closely then what is the point of both reading the book and seeing the movie. This book however is quite different to the film. They compiment each other nicely.

It was fasinating to read of the problem encounted by the Russians in trying to match the US navy particularly once they went to nuclear power. Once they did so the dangers both to themselves and the enviroment went up dramatically.

What I did notice while reading the book is that you get a feel of how much there is to get it right on a submarine. It certainly was a tribute to the Western navy designers that most of these problems did not occur like these in their ships.

I was also very impressed with the bravery and skill of the soviet sailors and commanders that went out in ships that were sub standard and how well under pressure they did behave.

Customer Review: "These are good weapons we're building,comrades!":
A great expose on the Soviet Navy.Although we all remember the Cold War and the phychological war between the USSR and the West,particularly the US.The massive buildups on both sides seemed to be without end.With the continual blustering of Russia,and continual expansion of communision we all wondered where it would all end.Little did we suspect that the powerful Soviet system would collapse from within with hardly a wimper.Many still don't understand how such a powerful system could fall apart so easily.Well,reading this book will show how the whole system was rotten to the core and totally inept in every aspect except brutality and deceit particularly towards their own people.It's amazing after all the slavery,sacrifice,brutality,forced labor camps,oppression and all the other evils carried out by the government, that so little was accomplished.
This book shows that while we feared these Soviet subs,the real threat was that they were so poorly designed,constructed,maintained and operated that the biggest threat was that they would have a malfunction and cause a major disaster.
To quote a little that sums up the Cold War from pg.210...
"The Cold War ,after all,was not just a military chess game,an effort to maintain the balance of nuclear power,with that wonderful concept Mutual Assured Destruction. It was also a war in a much more literal sense,a war of attrition.Our strategy in constantly upping the ante in the arms race was to push the entire Soviet system to the breaking point.And of course,that strategy succeeded.The Cold War is over,and we were the winners."
The book is well researched,well written and very informative.

Product Description:




Customer Review: The inside story:
This book contains the best description yet of what exactly happened at Chernobyl. In contrast to the fuzzy antitechnological nonsense of the mass media, the author identified the cause of the problem: human error. An individual who had the appropriate civil service rank was appointed director of the facility, even though he had no understanding of a nuclear reactor, and had never worked at a nuclear power plant. (The bulk of his experience was in large transformers for long-distance power lines.) He simply marched in and demonstrated his authority by giving orders to the reactor operators until he had created a meltdown. By the time that the district manager arrived - horrified - and took over, the damage was done. This basically parallels the experience at Three Mile Island, where the "suits" harassed the operators into geting the plant online (several months before it should have been) before a certain deadline, in order to satisfy the depreciation rules in the tax code.
The technology is perfectly safe; the danger is in allowing poorly educated jerks to be in charge.

Customer Review: Response to another reviewer's comments about the foreward:
Chernobyl: The Forbidden Truth is about the inadequate care of the victims of Chernobyl, the inadequate immediate response to the accident, the inadequate records-keeping of the investigaters, and the continuing cost in human and animal suffering caused by this tragedy. Dr. Gofman's foreward is an important addition that ties the book's litany of problems together with a description of what should be done instead regarding investigating the exact size of the calamity. Millions of Curies of various radioactive substances were released (some long-lived, some not so long-lived), but no one really knows where it all went and who is absorbing a dose right now. This is, however, a chronic problem with nuclear activities around the world, and not limited to Chernobyl.

In particular, Gofman's NINE ESSENTIAL RULES OF INQUIRY should be required reading for everyone involved in such research. It outlines important requirements for all such testing. Gofman is a Professor Eme! ritus of Medical Physics at the University of California at Berkeley. He is a co-discoverer of Uranium-233 and isolated the world's first "working quantities" of plutonium at Robert Oppenhiemer's personal request for the Manhattan Project during WWII. Since that service to America he has continued to research radiation and its effect on human health and is referred to as "brilliant" by even his adversaries.

His comments belong not only in the foreward of this important book, but they also belong pasted to the desks of every nuclear scientist who ever tried to answer the question of just how low a level of radiation is actually "safe".

Perhaps if/when they find an answer to that question Gofman's comments will no longer apply, but that day appears to be far off, when our best "research event" ever in the field of human radiation experiments (at least, the best "research event" since Hiroshima and Nagasaki) is as poorly han! dled as it was -- and is -- being handled, as is made clear! in Alla Yaroshinskaya's monumental book.

Customer Review: Great story of human side of the disaster. Flawed Forward.:
Ms. Yaroshinskaya's telling of her struggle to publish the truth about the Chernobyl disaster ranks among the best of this type. Very good, very true story. Well translated. The forward by John Gofman is a self praising, out-of-place, anti-nuclear discussion on how to conduct a type of research. The book would have been improved by its omission.

Product Description:
This is the first detailed study of the ecological impact of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant explosion on 26 April, 1986 - the largest civil nuclear catastrophe of all time. Geneticist Vladimir Savchenko details the effects of high level radionuclide release on the environment, on natural ecosystems, and on agroecosystems; the human effects then and now; the impact of radionuclide release on biological diversity and genetic systems; and the socioeconomic effects of the Chernobyl catastrophe. He also describes the Chernobyl Ecological Sciences Network, a multinational information network dealing with the large-scale, multidimensional effects of human technology out of control. The book has a bibliography, an index, and a glossary of units, ratios, and acronyms.

Product Description:
In the spring of 1986, Mohamed Makhzangi was living in Kiev, an Egyptian doctor studying in the Ukraine. As a result, he--like thousands of other--found himself living a nuclear nightmare when the Chernobyl plant had a catastrophic meltdown. Despite numerous failsafe protections, human error sent massive quantities of deadly radiation into the serene spring of the Soviet sky. In superbly crafted prose, Memories of a Meltdown describes the days that followed from Makhzangi?s dual perspective, as both an outsider and a victim. Described by the author as an "anti-memoir", this assemblage of impressions in the aftermath of the mltdown offers a searing account of factual events distilled through the filter of literature. Blending the realism of journalism with the emotional resonance of fiction, Makhzangi conveys the quiet but steadily mounting atmosphere of fear and panic, the dubious reliability of official statements, and an overall loss of the sense of safety, of anything ever being right with the world again. From the balding colleague who is concerned only about whether his hair will fall out, to a grandfather, fetching his young grandson a drink, who believes that there is less contamination in cool tap water than hot, Makhzangi portrays people unwilling or unable to believe in the magnitude of the disaster unfolding around them. In the finest tradition of literary reportage, Makhzangi masterfully conveys here the loneliness.

Product Description:
This digital document is an article from APS Diplomat Recorder, published by Pam Stein/Input Solutions on May 19, 2001. The length of the article is 349 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: RUSSIA - May 14 - Kursk To Be Raised By Sept. 20.(Brief Article)
Publication: APS Diplomat Recorder (Newsletter)
Date: May 19, 2001
Publisher: Pam Stein/Input Solutions
Volume: 54 Issue: 20 Page: NA

Article Type: Brief Article

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