Anatoly Dyatlov

Anatoly Stepanovich Dyatlov (Анатолий Степанович Дятлов; March 3, 1931 – December 13, 1995) was vice chief-engineer of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, and the supervisor of the fatal experiment which resulted in the Chernobyl disaster.

Dyatlov was born in 1931 in Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia (in the then Soviet Union). In 1959, he graduated from the Moscow Engineering Physics Institute. After graduation, he worked in a shipbuilding plant in Komsomolsk-on-Amur, installing reactors into submarines. He received a radiation dose of 200 rem, a dose which typically causes mild radiation sickness, vomiting, diarrhea, fatigue and reduction in resistance to infections, during a nuclear accident there. His son died of Leukemia. In 1973, he moved to Prypiat, Ukraine to work at the newly constructed Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant.

On April 26, 1986, Dyatlov supervised a test at Reactor 4 of the nuclear plant, which resulted in the worst nuclear plant accident in history. In 1987, he was found guilty "of criminal mismanagement of potentially explosive enterprises" and was sentenced to ten years in prison. He was released after five years. He wrote a book in which he claimed that poor plant design, rather than plant personnel, was primarily responsible for the accident.

During the accident, Dyatlov was exposed to a radiation dose of 390 rem (3.9 Sv), which causes death to 50% of affected persons after 30 days.

He died of heart failure in 1995.