[April 26, 1986: Immediately after the explosion, deputy chief engineer Anatoly Dyatlov stands shocked as shift supervisor Aleksandr Akimov calls his name repeatedly and alarms blare]
Aleksandr Akimov: Comrade Dyatlov? Comrade Dyatlov?!

Anatoly Dyatlov: What just happened?

Leonid Toptunov: I don't know.

[Turbine engineer Vyacheslav Brazhnik rushes into the room]
Vyacheslav Brazhnik: There's a fire in the turbine hall.

Dyatlov: The turbine hall... The control system tank. Hydrogen. [addressing Akimov] You and Toptunov, you morons blew the tank.

Toptunov: No, that's not—

Dyatlov: This is an emergency, everyone stay calm. Our first priority is to—

[As Dyatlov speaks, foreman Valeriy Perevozchenko runs through the open door in a panic]

Valeriy Perevozchenko: It exploded!

Dyatlov: We know. Akimov, are we cooling the reactor core?

Akimov: We shut it down, but the control rods are still... They're not all the way in, I disengaged the clutch—

Dyatlov: Alright, I'll disconnect the servos from the standby console. [to two other engineers] You two, get the backup pumps running, we need water moving through the core, that is all that matters!

Perevozchenko: There is no core! It exploded, the core exploded!

[Beat as all the engineers stare at Perevozchenko in disbelief and fear]

Dyatlov: He's in shock, get him out of here.

Perevozchenko: The lid is off. The stack is burning, I saw it.

Dyatlov: You're confused, RBMK reactor cores don't explode. Akimov!

Akimov: [to Toptunov] Don't worry, we did everything right. Something... something strange has happened.

Toptunov: Do you taste metal?

Dyatlov: Akimov!

Akimov: [to Perevozchenko] Comrade Perevozchenko, what you're saying is physically impossible. The core can't explode. It has to be the tank.

[Perevozchenko wordlessly shakes his head]

Dyatlov: We're wasting time. Let's go. Get the hydrogen out of the generators and pump water into the core.

Brazhnik: What about the fire?

Dyatlov: [annoyed; as if it were obvious] Call the fire brigade. [storms out]

Explore more quotes:


About the author

This page was created by our editorial team. Each page is manually curated, researched, collected, and issued by our staff writers. Quotes contained on this page have been double checked for their citations, their accuracy and the impact it will have on our readers.

Kelly Peacock is an accomplished poet and social media expert based in Brooklyn, New York. Kelly has a Bachelor's degree in creative writing from Farieligh Dickinson University and has contributed to many literary and cultural publications. Kelly assists on a wide variety of quote inputting and social media functions for Quote Catalog. Visit her personal website here.

Kendra Syrdal is a writer, editor, partner, and senior publisher for The Thought & Expression Company. Over the last few years she has been personally responsible for writing, editing, and producing over 30+ million pageviews on Thought Catalog.