Oleksiy Ananenko
Ukrainian engineer who helped drain the pools beneath the fourth reactor building.
Last updated
Oleksiy Ananenko is the mechanical engineer best known as one of the three men who drained the pools beneath the damaged reactor at Chernobyl. Born on 13 October 1959, he was working at the power plant when the disaster happened. He was picked for the task because he knew the layout of the fourth reactor building well.
Last updated 2026-09-29 from the source article.
Lore & Background
Ananenko's place in the history of the accident rests on a single mission. With two colleagues he formed the three-man team, nicknamed the "suicide squad", that drained the steam suppression pools under the fourth reactor building. His familiarity with the building was the reason he was picked.
Media reports later claimed that all three men died of radiation poisoning soon afterwards. That was not true of Ananenko, who was still alive long after the event.
Reader's Guide
His part in the operation was quickly forgotten in the wake of the disaster, and recognition came decades later. He received the Order for Courage in 2018 and the title Hero of Ukraine in 2019.
The mission has been retold in popular media. In the 2019 Sky/HBO miniseries Chernobyl, a dramatisation, he is portrayed by Baltasar Breki Samper, and the 2020 game Liquidators puts players in his position as the three men work beneath Reactor 4.
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Elsewhere in Chernobyl Disaster
Sources
Compiled from Wikipedia and the sources listed below. Text from Wikipedia is available under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is adapted from it.
- Wikipedia: Oleksiy Ananenko (CC BY-SA 4.0).
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