48 Hours a Day

No matter what, the players finally had a plan of action for the next step.

The reality was, no matter what kind of disaster, hope was humanity’s most advantageous weapon.

After finding a new direction, everyone, including Coconut, temporarily calmed down. Then, everyone began to discuss how to get close to Kovitz.

According to Bryuhanov, the expert group had arrived in Kiev an hour and a half ago. Factoring in the time on the road, they should have reached Pripyat by now. However, they did not know how they got there. Did they take a train, a car, or a ship?

Moreover, they did not know where they would go after they arrived and how their schedule for the day should be arranged. The players, however, knew where the expert group would be staying at night—the Pripyat Hotel, which was the only hotel in town. With a pleasant environment and good service, it was usually employed to receive tourists from all over the world.

Besnova was certain that if the expert group stayed in Pripyat, they would definitely stay in that hotel.

“This will save us a lot of trouble. We can just wait at the hotel,” Kui said. “When the time comes, we can let Besnova take a look at which room Kovitz is in. If we’re lucky, we won’t even have to alert the others.”

Her suggestion was also agreed upon by all the players. Hence, the maintenance crew started to drive toward the Pripyat Hotel. Everyone seemed to have regained their energy.

However, Zhang Heng knew very well that this energy was only temporary. Once he received an unsatisfactory answer from Kovitz, Coconut and many people’s emotions would probably be crushed.

Unlike the people of this era, Zhang Heng and his group of players were very clear about the horrors of nuclear radiation.

In a sense, mankind’s true understanding of the crisis actually came from the disaster. Perhaps only an intuitive incident as such could attract everyone’s attention and vigilance.

The Chernobyl accident was like a heavy punch into everyone’s stomachs, not only the ordinary people who knew nothing about nuclear physics but even the engineers and workers who worked at the nuclear power plant. Before this, thanks to their 30 odd years’ smooth path of nuclear utilization, complacency and paralysis somewhat took over everyone. Thus, when disaster really struck, many people lost their sense of danger.

This was also an important reason why, in the eyes of many people in the future, people seemed to be a little slow in dealing with this matter. To put it bluntly, both Soviets or the United States had never dealt with a situation where a reactor core exploded. So until now, 11 hours after the explosion, multitudes of people were completely oblivious to the enormity of the situation they were faced with.

…..

Just as the players rushed to the hotel, on the other side, the group of experts from Moscow had finally arrived from Kiev by car. Some headed directly to the nuclear power plant, where they spoke to Bryuhanov and Fomin in the bunker to understand the situation, while others headed to the Ministry of Internal Affairs to find an MI-6 helicopter. They also found a photography agency and binoculars, intending to fly above the reactor to see what was going on.

When the helicopter approached the reactor, they were completely stunned by the scene below.

The original position of the reactor was now completely in ruins. The drum separator had long left the place where it was supposed to be, and even the pipes below had been ripped out. The gathering pipes stretched out from the external wall of the auxiliary system, proudly pointing to the sky. Crushed stones and black graphite were strewn everywhere, and the reactor core was glowing with a blue luster. The air was also filled with a strong metallic smell.

The amazing thing was that in this terrible mess, the water tank of the emergency control system that Bryuhanov and Fomin had reported didn’t seem to have suffered much damage. The wall that it was on was still standing there.

The experts on the plane were also a little dumbfounded. The situation at the scene was far too different from the information they had received. On the way here, they were already thinking about how to repair the damaged part of the reactor as quickly as they could, reconnecting the reactor to the grid to generate electricity.

But now, even the most optimistic person would not think that reactor No.4 reactor could continue generating electricity.

The experts led the helicopter in a hover over the right side of the reactor before asking the cameraman to capture the scene under their feet. Everyone’s heart and eyes were beating wildly.

Even without a measuring instrument, they could sense how powerful the radiation was, especially when they looked at the ruins of the reactor. They could see the deep red color below. Those on the helicopter instantly knew what that meant, but they said nothing because the prospects of that would be simply too horrifying.

It would condemn not only the Chernobyl nuclear power plant to its doom but also the 50,000 residents of Pripyat. Ukraine, Belarus, and even further would be affected. In fact, they were only flying near the reactor, and they were exposed to an insane amount of radiation. Only because they were responsible for the investigation did the experts not let the helicopter land immediately.

However, when they saw Bryuhanov and Fomin in the bunker, they did not expect them to still continue clenching their teeth, insisting that the water tank had exploded and that the reactor was safe and sound.

Bryuhanov and Fomin had already figured out that they had no way out, no matter how much they tried to shun responsibility for the reactor exploding. As the main person in charge of the nuclear power plant, they could not escape responsibility, and the only way to survive now was to drag the experts sent by the committee down with them. Then, they would figure out how to cover up this big lie.

The experts who had seen the reactor were speechless. They looked at Bryuhanov and Fomin with a hint of sympathy, thinking that the two of them must’ve gone completely crazy.

However, after all, the first group was only responsible for investigating the accident and a solution. They did not have the right to directly command and issue orders, even though everyone who saw the situation of the reactor felt that they should immediately evacuate the nearby residents.

However, they still waited for the members of the accident committee to arrive on the second plane, especially Boris Yevdojimovic Scherbina, the vice-chairman of the Council of Ministers. He also happened to be the first person to be in charge of handling the Chernobyl accident this time.

He had been promoting the construction of nuclear energy in Second World War for all these years. Previously, Bryuhanov had proposed that he should evacuate the residents of Pripyat, but he had rejected it without hesitation. Having arrived in Pripyat around nine at night, he rushed to the meeting room without taking a breather.

“How’s the situation?” Scherbina rubbed his sore thigh and sat on a chair in the conference room.

“It’s awful. The reactor has been completely destroyed. I propose that we should evacuate the residents of Pripyat immediately,” Marlin, the person in charge of the Soviet special investigation commission said with a solemn voice.