Valery Bespalov
Engineer in the three-man team that drained the pools under the reactor.
Last updated
Valery Bespalov is one of the three men who drained the pools beneath the damaged reactor after the Chernobyl disaster. An engineer at the power plant, he was born on 21 September 1957. The pools in question were the steam suppression pools under the fourth reactor building.
Last updated 2026-09-29 from the source article.
Lore & Background
The three-man team became known as the "suicide squad". Media reports later claimed that the men had died of radiation poisoning shortly after the mission. In fact he was living in Kyiv as of 2019.
Reader's Guide
Recognition came decades later, when he received the title Hero of Ukraine in 2019. His part in the mission has also been retold in popular media. The 2019 Sky/HBO miniseries Chernobyl, a dramatisation, has Philip Barantini in his role, and the 2020 game Liquidators follows the three men as they work beneath Reactor 4.
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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: Valery Bespalov (CC BY-SA 4.0).
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