You're reading: New York Times: Viktor Bryukhanov, blamed for the Chornobyl disaster, dies at 85

Viktor Bryukhanov, who helped build and manage the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine, where a reactor explosion in 1986 released a radioactive dust cloud over Europe and a humbling fog of finger-pointing and political fallout that contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union, died on Oct. 13 in Kyiv. He was 85.

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