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The court then got down to business. For three hours a clerk spelled out the charges in daunting detail. They told of systematic safety violations, inept supervision and deliberate departures from plant operating rules in an effort to coax more electricity from the nuclear-fired generators. One account accused the defendants of failing to notify those living near the plant of high radiation until 36 hours after the accident. Murmurs rippled through the audience when the document charged Anatoly Dyatlov, 57, deputy chief engineer at the time of the accident, with sending four workers to check the reactor hours after the disaster without warning them of the danger or providing them with protective clothing. The four later died of radiation poisoning.
If convicted of the minutely itemized charges, as seems almost certain under the tightly controlled Soviet legal system, five of the defendants face sentences of up to ten years in prison. They include Dyatlov, former Plant Director Viktor Bryukhanov, 51, and former Chief Engineer Nikolai Fomin, 50. The three men have already been stripped of Communist Party membership and have spent the past year in a Kiev jail, awaiting trial. Wearing plain dark suits and shirts open at the collar, all three looked gaunt and weary.
Moscow allowed the remaining defendants to continue to work at the plant, but they were demoted and required to notify authorities regularly of their whereabouts. Included among them are Alexander Kovalenko, 45, who supervised the No. 4 reactor, and Boris Rogozhkin, 52, the boss of the midnight-to-8 a.m. shift (the fatal explosions occurred at 1:25 a.m.). Both could receive ten- year sentences. The sixth defendant, Government Inspector Yuri Laushkin, 50, faces up to two years in prison for failing to carry out his responsibilities.
When asked whether they understood the case against them, the men admitted some guilt but denied outright responsibility for the accident. Several blamed faulty equipment or design errors. Shielding his eyes from the TV lights, Bryukhanov conceded that he had been partially negligent. He insisted, however, that he was not guilty of safety violations. Dyatlov provided the most emotional moment. Grabbing a microphone and holding it close, he denied in a firm voice that he was directly to blame for the death of any plant workers. Then Dyatlov added, "With so many human deaths, I cannot say I am completely innocent."
Despite glasnost, the Soviet public had only a limited view of the proceedings. Official press accounts stressed that the investigative report blamed flagrant breaches of safety rules for the accident. The nightly television news program Vremya (Time) showed a few minutes of the opening day without mentioning that the defendants had denied some of the accusations. Subsequent sessions were not reported at all.