The chief engineer who refused to believe the reactor was destroyed and kept pumping water into its ruins
He smashed his glasses and cut his wrists with the shards, forcing the court to postpone his trial.
Nikolai Fomin was a Soviet nuclear engineer who joined the Chernobyl plant in 1972 and rose to chief engineer in 1981. Arriving at the plant shortly after the April 26, 1986 explosion, he refused to accept reports that the reactor was destroyed and ordered water to be pumped into the wreckage of Unit 4 for hours, while sending a subordinate on a reconnaissance mission that delivered a fatal radiation dose. Arrested after the disaster, he was sentenced to 10 years but was released early after a pre-trial suicide attempt and subsequent confinement in a psychiatric hospital; he later worked at the Kalinin Nuclear Power Plant before retiring.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1972Started at Chernobyl NPP
- 1981–1986Chief Engineer, Chernobyl NPP
- 1987Sentenced to 10 years; imprisoned
- 1988Transferred to psychiatric hospital; released early
- 1990s–2000sWorked at Kalinin NPP
- mid-2000sRetired; lived in Udomlya
Related historical events
Approving the test programme and the 1987 trial
Fomin's heaviest decision as chief engineer was his approval of the test programme that led to the disaster, a procedure to measure generator characteristics during a turbine rotor rundown. The programme itself was written by Anatoly Dyatlov, the deputy chief engineer for operations, and Gennady Metlenko, a representative of Dontekhenergo. On the night of 26 April 1986 Fomin learned of the accident only around 4 a.m., when the reactor room was already on fire, and joined the cleanup; shortly before the accident he had suffered a broken spine in a car crash.
He was a member of the CPSU but was expelled after the disaster, and was arrested together with plant director Viktor Bryukhanov. The trial was first set for 24 March 1987 but was postponed because of Fomin's suicide attempt, in which he smashed his glasses and cut his wrists with the shards. Proceedings dragged on for about a year, and from 7 to 30 July 1987 a temporary courtroom was set up in the House of Culture in Chernobyl. There Fomin blamed the operators for deviating from the test plan. The court nonetheless sentenced him and Bryukhanov to ten years in a general-regime labour camp. In the same trial Dyatlov also received ten years, Rogozhin five, Kovalenko three and Laushkin two, a verdict that exposed not only individual error but also design flaws and failures of the supervisory system.