The deputy director of the Kurchatov Institute, Valery Legasov is among the men selected to travel to Chernobyl in the immediate aftermath of the explosion as part of a government commission to contain the effects of the disaster. At 49 years old, Legasov is “thickset but athletic, with dark hair and heavy spectacles” (120). He is next in line for the directorship at the Kurchatov Institute, and fully expects to enter that role when his superior, the 83-year-old Anatoly Aleksandrov, retires or passes away. Like many senior members of Moscow’s nuclear agencies, most of Legasov’s experience lies outside the realm of nuclear physics. A chemist by trade, Legasov’s birthright as the son of a senior Party ideologue gives him a privileged status that affords him “the confidence to speak his mind in a world of cowed apparatchiks” (120).

Upon arriving in Chernobyl, Legasov acknowledges the seriousness of the situation sooner than many of his colleagues on the commission and estimates that the core will burn for at least two months, “releasing a column of radionuclides into the air that would spread contamination across the USSR and circle the globe for years to come” (153). In May, after the rest of the commission has already returned to Moscow, their throats raw and red from radiation exposure, Legasov stays behind in Chernobyl.