b. 1957
Valerii Bespalov
Thermal engineer, Hero of Ukraine
“Go into a sauna, switch off the light, and you’ll understand what it was like down there”: Valerii Bespalov on the dark corridor under the wrecked reactor. In 1986 the engineer from Donbas and two colleagues drained the water from under Chornobyl’s Unit 4. In 2019 he became a Hero of Ukraine.
Key accomplishments
- 1986: with Oleksii Ananenko and Borys Baranov, drained the water from the bubbler pool under the wrecked Unit 4 at Chornobyl, preventing a possible second explosion
- More than two decades at the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant (from 1980, with a break in 1989–1992), later at the national nuclear energy company Energoatom
- Hero of Ukraine (Decree No. 468/2019)
- Order for Courage, 3rd class (2018); Order of the Badge of Honour (1989)
From Donbas to Chornobyl
Valerii Bespalov was born in 1957 in the village of Lisivka in the Donetsk region. In 1980 he graduated from the Odesa Polytechnic Institute as a thermal power engineer and that same year started work at the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant, where he had already done his pre-diploma placement. By 1986 he was a senior engineer in the turbine shop.
Just an ordinary accident?
On 25 April 1986 Bespalov worked his usual shift and went home. He learned about the explosion in the night from colleagues. “We didn’t know it was a radiation accident. We took it for an ordinary, technical one,” he recalls.
Fifteen hundred tonnes of water
Soon it became clear that the molten mass from the reactor could reach a pool holding about 1,500 tonnes of water, and that could set off a second explosion. The water had to be drained by opening valves in a corridor beneath the plant. Bespalov went down with Oleksii Ananenko and Borys Baranov, in protective suits, rubber gloves and boots, and “petal” respirators. The corridor was dark, lit only by two torches, and they had to run knee-deep in hot water. “Go into a sauna, switch off the light, and you’ll understand what it was like down there,” Bespalov explains. Half an hour later the job was done. When the molten mass reached the pool, the water was already gone.
A life in the industry
In 1989 Bespalov left the plant for a few years to work as a design engineer, and in 1992 he returned to Chornobyl. He later worked at Energoatom. On 27 June 2019 he was made a Hero of Ukraine, together with Ananenko and, posthumously, Baranov.
Why it matters today
Valerii Bespalov wasn’t looking for glory: he went into the dark corridor under the reactor because the work had to be done, and done fast. The disaster was held back by people who did their jobs in the worst days as carefully as on ordinary ones. An engineer from the Donetsk region helped prevent a second explosion, and then spent many more years keeping Ukraine’s nuclear industry safe. His story is a reminder that heroism often looks like a job done honestly.
