In the early hours of the morning of April 26, 1986, the nuclear reactor at the Chernobyl power plant in Ukraine exploded, unleashing a storm of radioactive material into the atmosphere and contaminating most of Europe with its fallout. It was a disaster on an unprecedented scale.

This is a story of hubris, heroism, and tragedy as engineers, firefighters, doctors, and government officials all worked to contain the fiasco.

In this volume, Ian Fitzgerald reveals the details of how the accident occurred, the desperate response to the situation and the investigation and recriminations that followed. He asks what lessons can be learned—and what, if anything, we are doing to make sure they can never happen again.