The Flying 1,000-Ton Lid and the Lie That Lasted Fourteen Years

From Augustus Caesar to Chernobyl to Howard Zinn, the fight over what children learn about their country is 2,000 years old. | Past Passport

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Residents of Pripyat stood outside watching the blue glow over Reactor 4. Some brought their children. The lethal beauty mesmerized them.

Reactor 4 at the Chernobyl nuclear plant exploded in Ukraine on April 26, 1986. At 1:23 a.m., an explosion equaling 60 tons of TNT tossed the reactor’s 1,000-ton concrete lid into the air like a flipped kopeck coin. Nearly 7 tons of uranium fuel — cesium-137, strontium-90, iodine-131, plutonium-239 — sprayed miles into the atmosphere.

An ominous blue light rose into the clouds, visible for miles. Cherenkov radiation, the glow of an exposed reactor core, beautiful and lethal. Residents of Pripyat stood watching from the streets and nearby bridges, some holding their children in their arms, …