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Chernobyl 01:23:40: The Incredible True Story of the World's Worst Nuclear Disaster Paperback – April 16, 2016

by Andrew Leatherbarrow (Author)
4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 2,817 ratings
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At 01:23:40 on April 26th 1986, Alexander Akimov pressed the emergency shutdown button at Chernobyl’s fourth nuclear reactor. It was an act that forced the permanent evacuation of a city, killed thousands and crippled the Soviet Union. The event spawned decades of conflicting, exaggerated and inaccurate stories.

This book, the result of five years of research, presents an accessible but comprehensive account of what really happened. From the desperate fight to prevent a burning reactor core from irradiating eastern Europe, to the self-sacrifice of the heroic men who entered fields of radiation so strong that machines wouldn’t work, to the surprising truth about the legendary ‘Chernobyl divers’, all the way through to the USSR’s final show-trial. The historical narrative is interwoven with a story of the author’s own spontaneous journey to Ukraine’s still-abandoned city of Pripyat and the wider Chernobyl Zone.

Complete with over 45 pages of photographs of modern-day Pripyat and technical diagrams of the power station, Chernobyl 01:23:40 is a fascinating new account of the world’s worst nuclear disaster.
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Previous page
  1. Print length
    256 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publication date
    April 16, 2016
  4. Dimensions
    6 x 0.58 x 9 inches
  5. ISBN-10
    0993597505
  6. ISBN-13
    978-0993597503
  7. See all details
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Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Andrew Leatherbarrow (April 16, 2016)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 256 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0993597505
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0993597503
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 12.8 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 0.58 x 9 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 2,817 ratings

About the author

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Andrew Leatherbarrow

Andrew Leatherbarrow

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Andrew lives with his wife and their two children in Lancashire, England. He visited Chernobyl in 2011, then felt compelled to write about it. The resulting book – Chernobyl 01:23:40 – became a bestseller in countries around the world.

Customer reviews

4.3 out of 5 stars
4.3 out of 5
2,817 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Eric
5.0 out of 5 stars A very readable book about a tragic event
Reviewed in the United States on January 8, 2024
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I really enjoyed this book…it didn’t bog down too much into technical details that could easily have made this a boring read. Instead, the author did a great job mingling easy to understand technical descriptions with the human story of this historic tragedy. The story of the author’s own pilgrimage to Chernobyl was also interesting and well woven into the narrative.
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Brittany Huff
4.0 out of 5 stars fantastic read!
Reviewed in the United States on January 13, 2024
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I enjoy reading at Chernobyl and always learn something new. Although I haven’t read a book about someone’s own experience visiting the site and surrounding area, which was amazing to hear! I enjoyed the pictures and overall explanation of what may have happened.
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Naomi
5.0 out of 5 stars Five stars
Reviewed in the United States on December 19, 2023
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I really enjoyed this, It’s very well researched and shows the depths of the disaster. It also focuses a lot on people and how they were affected.
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KM
3.0 out of 5 stars Good reference; could use improvements
Reviewed in the United States on December 9, 2016
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I purchased this book because I am visiting Chernobyl in a few months and wanted to get more information on the events that happened. The author is someone who visited the exclusion zone in 2011 and has collected information from a variety of sources and turned it into this book. Most pages have a handful of citations from other, more authoritative, sources. I did learn from the information in this book, but I wish it had been a bit more in-depth in certain areas. For instance, the author discusses the purpose of graphite in the reactor's core, but he never really describes the chemistry behind how a neutron moderator works. The same for boron: why does it absorb neutrons? The book gave me enough information where I was able to look these up on my own, but it would have been nice to discuss it in the book.

The book's preface discusses the author's difficulty with finding an editor. Although he did eventually find one, I felt the editing could have been better. There are a number of minor grammatical errors throughout the book (comma splices, lists that are delimited by both commas and semicolons [page 233], etc). The book interleaves accounts of events surrounding the disaster with the author's personal experience walking around the exclusion zone taking pictures. I personally did not find the latter sections very interesting. Regarding the events, the author often likes to insert his personal opinion about events in otherwise objective overview. The following is an excerpt from page 64.

"""
While the RBMK's designers were unaware of this flaw when the RBMK was first created, they had, they later admitted, forgotten to mention it, "out of absentmindedness," once they realised. I do not understand at all how such an obvious design flaw can be overlooked by so many people.
"""

I personally found sections like this jarring and the author's opinion unwelcome. At the end of the day, he is not authoritative enough to be commenting on the design of the reactor.

Finally, I felt the wording was overly sensational at times. The material is interesting enough without having to repeatedly tell me that "many, many people would suffer" or "one could safely assume [...] that all of them developed health complications".

Anyway, this is the first book I have read on the incident. I thought it was good, but could be great with some additional information and editing.
15 people found this helpful
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Judie A
5.0 out of 5 stars A MUST read for anyone taking nuclear power for granted
Reviewed in the United States on June 25, 2019
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This is a difficult book to read about the most horrific disaster ever faced by humans. Mr. Leatherbarrow has taken the time to research the details of nuclear power generation with the RBMK generation system and explains it in a way that I can almost understand. He has interviewed as many survivors of the disaster as would speak with him, both workers and civilians. He has researched the numerous papers that have been written detailing the problems inherent in the system, failures of workers due to lack of understanding of these problems, as well as failures on the part of those in power.

Leatherbarrow doesn't fail to tell the details of the effects of radioactivity on living biological organisms... both short term results of extremely high dose radiation (agonizing death within hours to days), as well as long term exposure to much lower dose, residual radiation remaining in the atmosphere and environment (cancer, birth defects, and changes in DNA and cellular metabolism.
He reveals that the answers to how many people have been affected by the accident will probably never be known and why this is so.

There is a great deal to consider when deciding about the feasibility of building future nuclear power plants . It's true that they don't contribute to the global warming process per se, but the issue of the safety of the planet and it's population of living creatures is in grave doubt. There have been many more nuclear accidents than most of us have ever heard about. The author tells about some of them, which seem to have occurred because we don't truly understand everything we need to about radioactivity in order to operate it's generation in safety.
4 people found this helpful
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K. Robin
4.0 out of 5 stars Well researched, but could use much more editing
Reviewed in the United States on February 3, 2017
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I'd like to give this 3.5 stars, not quite 4 and not quite 3. First the good: The material is incredibly well researched. The documentation of his sources is terrific, though hard to follow in the Kindle edition (not the author's fault). I was fascinated by the recounting of events leading up to the disaster, the heart-breaking stories of those who sacrificed their health if not their lives, and his impressions of Chernobyl today. Now the bad: Leatherbarrow admits he is not a writer and this proves to be true. I found myself wanting to take a red pencil to many of his sentences. He credits the staff of Reddit for helping edit the book. In my opinion, the manuscript could have used even more rigorous editing. There were whole paragraphs repeated almost word for word in different chapters of the book. His account of exploring an abandoned British installation, though interesting, was unrelated to the overall story. The nighttime stroll through Kiev (part of his trip to Chernobyl) really wasn't relevant to the subject matter either. I would still recommend this book for those interested in the Chernobyl crisis, though be prepared to get jarred occasionally by the writing and organization of the material.
43 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

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James
5.0 out of 5 stars Best book on Chernobyl I have read
Reviewed in Canada on March 20, 2020
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Combining his personal memoir of a trip to Chernobyl with a lucid historical account, Andrew has scored a major hit. His chilling photos back up a tale of incompetence, hubris and fear in the USSR...and a warning to all who operate nuclear plants. A great read...highly recommended.
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Prof. Marco Farias
5.0 out of 5 stars um bom livro
Reviewed in Brazil on January 30, 2020
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o livro apresenta boas discussões acerca do acidente nuclear em Chernobyl. Não é extremamente técnico, mas apresenta uma discussão razoável da cadeia de eventos que culminou na explosão do reator. O escritor é cuidadoso na discussão das informações e adiciona fatos relevantes sobre o período pós acidente.
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ARNOBARD
5.0 out of 5 stars Très intéressant.
Reviewed in France on January 27, 2020
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Bon ouvrage car l'auteur s'est rendu à la centrale Lénine ainsi qu'à Pripiat.
Son émotion de ce qu'il a vu et ressenti pendant ce voyage est captivante.
De nombreuses photographies illustrent ce livre ce qui le rend encore plus intéressant.
Ouvrage en Anglais mais facile à traduire en français.
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Andrea
5.0 out of 5 stars A very good account of the Chernobyl disaster
Reviewed in Italy on January 9, 2020
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The author provides first a brief and interesting history of nuclear related accidents, starting from the first experiments by Marie Curie. The events and facts concerning the accident to reactor n°4 (both the reasons for the 'crazy' test of that night and the various lacks in a rigorous design of the RBMK) and all the aftermath are well explained and rich in details.

The only thing that can be found a bit annoying is the temporal shift between the chapters in which the author alternates the story of the accident with the description of his own travel to the exclusion zone, but I've found it interesting at the end, making the reader feel like to walk around Pripyat. Loved the images gallery at the end.

Recommended reading if interested in what happened on that fateful night back in 1986.
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Sakura
5.0 out of 5 stars Grossartiges Buch
Reviewed in Germany on July 3, 2019
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Diese Buch ist fantastisch. Es schildert auf verständliche Art den gesammten Ablauf und die Folgen des Desasters. Natürlich auf Englisch, dafür mit hilfreichen Grafiken und eindrücklichen Bildern.

Habe das ganze Buch an einem Nachmittag verschlungen, werde es sicher bald noch einmal lesen.
Nur zu empfehlen, für jeden, der sich für die Katastrophe interessiert.
2 people found this helpful
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