Anatoly Dyatlov

Lore & Background

Dyatlov was born in Atamanovo in Krasnoyarsk Krai and left home at 14. He trained as an electrician in Norilsk, then graduated with honours from the Moscow Engineering and Physics Institute in 1959. At a shipyard in Komsomolsk-on-Amur he worked on installing reactors in submarines, and during an accident there he received a dose of 100 rem.

In 1973 he moved to Pripyat to work at the newly built plant, where he became one of its three most senior managers, in charge of Units Three and Four. Staff remembered a demanding manager; some found him unfair, others respected his knowledge and thought him honest.

On 26 April 1986 he supervised the test at Reactor 4. Power had been reduced to 200 MW, below the 700 MW set out in the test plan, and the reactor then stalled. After the explosion he at first refused to believe the reactor had been destroyed. He was exposed to 650 rem and survived.

Reader's Guide

Dyatlov was tried with plant director Bryukhanov, chief engineer Fomin and three others in a trial that opened on 6 July 1987 in the town of Chernobyl. All six were found guilty, and he received the maximum sentence of ten years. He alone among the defendants stayed combative, arguing that the operators were not to blame.

From prison and after his release he argued that the design of the reactor, not the staff, was chiefly responsible, in letters, in a paper published in 1991 and in a book. Later findings gave more weight to reactor design and to how safety information reached the operators than the first Soviet investigation had, while still treating departures from procedure as a major factor.

He died in Kyiv in 1995 of bone marrow cancer. Dramatisations have portrayed him several times, among them the 2019 miniseries Chernobyl, in which he is played by Paul Ritter.

Did You Know?

• He is said to have known Eugene Onegin by heart.
• His memoirs were recorded on video in 1994, a year before his death.
• One of his two sons died of leukemia at age nine.