Adam Higginbotham | |
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Born | 1968 (age 55–56) Somerset, England |
Occupation | Journalist |
Language | English |
Subject | Non-fiction and investigative journalism |
Notable awards | 2020 Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Non-fiction |
Website | |
www |
Adam Higginbotham (born 1968 in Somerset) [1] is a British journalist who is the former U.S. correspondent for The Sunday Telegraph Magazine and former editor-in-chief of The Face . He has also served as a contributing writer for The New Yorker , Wired , and The New York Times . [2] [3]
Higginbotham is the author of Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster, published in 2019 by Simon & Schuster, which received the 2020 William E. Colby Award for Military and Intelligence Writing, the 2020 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Non-Fiction, and was selected one of the 10 Best Books of 2019 by The New York Times . [4] [5]
In 2024 Higginbotham released Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space ( ISBN 978-1-98217-661-7), about the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster.
The Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant (ChNPP) is a nuclear power plant undergoing decommissioning. ChNPP is located near the abandoned city of Pripyat in northern Ukraine, 16.5 kilometers (10 mi) northwest of the city of Chernobyl, 16 kilometers (10 mi) from the Belarus–Ukraine border, and about 100 kilometers (62 mi) north of Kyiv. The plant was cooled by an engineered pond, fed by the Pripyat River about 5 kilometers (3 mi) northwest from its juncture with the Dnieper River.
The Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant is a decommissioned two-unit RBMK-1500 nuclear power station in Visaginas Municipality, Lithuania. It was named after the nearby city of Ignalina. Due to the plant's similarities to the infamous Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in both reactor design and lack of a robust containment building, Lithuania agreed to close the plant as part of its agreement of accession to the European Union. Unit 1 was closed in December 2004; Unit 2 in December 2009. The plant accounted for 25% of Lithuania's electricity generating capacity and supplied about 70% of Lithuania's electrical demand. It was closed on December 31, 2009. Proposals have been made to construct a new nuclear power plant at the site, but such plans have yet to come to fruition.
The Chernobyl disaster began on 26 April 1986 with the explosion of the No. 4 reactor of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant near the city of Pripyat in northern Ukraine, near the Belarus border in the Soviet Union. It is one of only two nuclear energy accidents rated at the maximum severity on the International Nuclear Event Scale, the other being the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident. The response involved more than 500,000 personnel and cost an estimated 18 billion roubles. It remains the worst nuclear disaster in history, and the costliest disaster in human history, with an estimated cost of $700 billion USD.
Aleksandr Fyodorovich Akimov was a Soviet engineer who was the supervisor of the shift that worked at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant Reactor Unit 4 on the night of the Chernobyl disaster, 26 April 1986.
Valery Alekseyevich Legasov was a Soviet inorganic chemist and a member of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union. He is primarily known for his efforts to contain the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. Legasov also presented the findings of an investigation to the International Atomic Energy Agency at the United Nations Office at Vienna, detailing the actions and circumstances that led to the explosion of Reactor No. 4 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant.
Anatoly Stepanovich Dyatlov was a Soviet engineer who was the deputy chief engineer for the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. He supervised the safety test which resulted in the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, for which he served time in prison as he was blamed for not following the safety protocols. He was released due to health concerns in 1990. Later investigations found that reactor design flaws were a more significant factor than human error, although some safety procedures were not followed.
Leningrad Nuclear Power Plant ) is a nuclear power plant located in the town of Sosnovy Bor in Russia's Leningrad Oblast, on the southern shore of the Gulf of Finland, some 70 kilometres (43 mi) to the west of the city centre of Saint Petersburg.
The William E. Colby Military Writers' Award was established in 1999 by the William E. Colby Military Writers' Symposium at Norwich University in Vermont in order to recognize "a first work of fiction or non-fiction that has made a major contribution to the understanding of intelligence operations, military history, or international affairs." It is named in honor of William Egan Colby. As of 2021, Alex Kershaw is the chair of its selection committee.
Leonid Petrovych Telyatnikov was a Soviet, and later Ukrainian, fire brigade commander notable for his role in directing the early stages initial response to the Chernobyl disaster. Telyatnikov served many years as an officer in both Soviet and Ukrainian firefighting organizations, working in a variety of junior and senior leadership positions throughout his career.
The Kyshtym disaster, sometimes referred to as the Mayak disaster or Ozyorsk disaster in newer sources, was a radioactive contamination accident that occurred on 29 September 1957 at Mayak, a plutonium production site for nuclear weapons and nuclear fuel reprocessing plant located in the closed city of Chelyabinsk-40 in Chelyabinsk Oblast, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union.
The Chernobyl disaster, considered the worst nuclear disaster in history, occurred on 26 April 1986 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, then part of the Soviet Union, now in Ukraine. From 1986 onward, the total death toll of the disaster has lacked consensus; as peer-reviewed medical journal The Lancet and other sources have noted, it remains contested. There is consensus that a total of approximately 30 people died from immediate blast trauma and acute radiation syndrome (ARS) in the seconds to months after the disaster respectively, with 60 in total in the decades since, inclusive of later radiation induced cancer. However, there is considerable debate concerning the accurate number of projected deaths that have yet to occur due to the disaster's long-term health effects; long-term death estimates range from up to 4,000 for the most exposed people of Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia, to 16,000 cases in total for all those exposed on the entire continent of Europe, with figures as high as 60,000 when including the relatively minor effects around the globe. Such numbers are based on the heavily contested linear no-threshold model.
The Elephant's Foot is the nickname given to a large mass of corium, composed of materials formed from molten concrete, sand, steel, uranium, and zirconium. The mass formed beneath Reactor 4 of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, near Pripyat, Ukraine, during the Chernobyl disaster of 26 April 1986, and is noted for its extreme radioactivity. It is named for its wrinkled appearance and large size, evocative of the foot of an elephant.
Chernobyl is a 2019 historical drama television miniseries that revolves around the Chernobyl disaster of 1986 and the cleanup efforts that followed. The series was created and written by Craig Mazin and directed by Johan Renck. It features an ensemble cast led by Jared Harris, Stellan Skarsgård, Emily Watson, and Paul Ritter. The series was produced by HBO in the United States and Sky UK in the United Kingdom.
Nikolai Maximovich Fomin is a Ukrainian engineer. He was the chief engineer of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant from 1981 until the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986.
Vasily Ivanovich Ignatenko was a Soviet firefighter who was among the first responders to the Chernobyl disaster. He worked as an electrician before being conscripted into the Soviet Armed Forces in 1980, where he completed his two years of service as a military firefighter. Afterwards, he took up employment as a paramilitary firefighter with Fire Brigade No. 6, which was based out of Pripyat. On 26 April 1986, Ignatenko's fire brigade was involved in mitigating the immediate aftermath of the Chernobyl disaster; fighting the fires that broke out following the initial explosion of Reactor 4 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. While on site, Ignatenko received a high dose of radiation, leading to his death at a radiological hospital in Moscow eighteen days later.
Leonid Fedorovych Toptunov was a Soviet electrical engineer who was the senior reactor control chief engineer at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant Reactor Unit 4 on the night of the Chernobyl disaster, 26 April 1986.
Viktor Petrovich Bryukhanov was the manager of construction of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant and the director of the plant from 1970 to 1986.
Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster (2019) by Adam Higginbotham is a history of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster that occurred in Soviet Ukraine in 1986. It won the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction in 2020. Higginbotham spent more than a decade interviewing eyewitnesses and reviewing documents from the disaster, including some that were recently declassified. Higginbotham considers it the first English-language account that is close to the truth.
Maria Volodymyrivna Protsenko is a Ukrainian architect known for her role as the chief architect for Pripyat during the Chornobyl disaster.