Who is Valery Khodemchuk and what happened to him after Chernobyl?

Chernobyl ended on Friday with a chapter that left us cold and left us with a big question: who is Valery Khodemchuk?

In episode 5 of Chernobyl, the highest-rated series in history, Valery Legasov confessed everything the USSR had hidden about the accident and emphasized the story of Valery Khodemchuk.

Image: HBO

But who is Valery Khodemchuk?

Valery Khodemchuk in Chernobyl was one of the engineers working at the nuclear plant in the city of Pripyat, Ukraine.

At 1:23 am on April 26, 1986, Valery Khodemchuk was precisely in the engine room.

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His job was to supervise the water pumps of the nuclear reactor during the safety test that gave rise to one of the largest nuclear disasters in history.

Unlike the characters in this gallery, Khodemchuk did not appear in the series created by HBO, although his name is mentioned in the first and last episodes of it.

Image: HBO

In Chernobyl chapter 1 we see that after the explosion the staff begins to search, without success, for Valery Khodemchuk.

In the last episode, ‘Vichnaya Pamyat’ we hear the tragic fate of this engineer in the speech of scientist Valery Legasov during the trial against the directors of the Pripyat plant.

Image: HBO

What happened to Valery Khodemchuk after Chernobyl?

Valery Khodemchuk was the first to be hit by the series of explosions inside the nuclear reactor.

Although his death was instantaneous, the worst did not stop there, but in the fact that his body could never be recovered and buried as was done with the firefighters and workers.

Image: HBO

Because? Because his body was buried under reactor four of the plant, making it impossible to enter due to the high levels of radiation.

However, there was someone who did try to rescue Valery Khodemchuk from the reactor flames and his name was Vladimir Shashenok, another of the plant workers.

Image: HBO

Shashenok tried to enter for his comrade, but the radiation was so much that Vladimir died a few seconds later.

Not much was said about Khodemchuk, Shashenok or the other direct victims of the Chernobyl nuclear accident.

Image: HBO

However, the Soviet media Pravda published the following at the time:

“The fourth block of the reactor will become his coffin. And, perhaps, someone will write on those concrete walls that it is not the reactor that is buried there, but Valery Khodemchuk.”

Image: Michael Kötter for Creative Commons

This would be fulfilled decades later, when a memorial to Valery Khodemchuk was placed at the Pripyat plant.

The official version of the Chernobyl dead

According to reports from the USSR, the official number of direct deaths from the explosion of the Chernobyl plant was 31 people (Khodemchuk included).

However, specialized scientific groups and organizations such as Greenpeace make a real estimate of 4,000 to 27,000 deaths related to the radiation emitted by this nuclear disaster.

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