Leonid Toptunov


Leonid Fedorovych Toptunov was a Soviet engineer who was the senior reactor control chief engineer at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant Reactor Unit 4 on the night of the Chernobyl disaster, 26 April 1986.

Biography

Leonid Toptunov was born on 16 August 1960 in Mykolaivka, Buryn Raion, Sumy Oblast.
In 1983, he graduated from the Moscow Power Engineering Institute, with a specialist degree in nuclear power plant engineering.
In March 1983, Toptunov began his career at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. He worked as a unit control engineer and senior reactor plant control engineer.
On the night of 26 April 1986, Leonid Toptunov was working in the control room at the reactor control panel, with Aleksandr Akimov. During the accident, he was exposed to a radiation dose of 700 rem.
He died from the acute radiation poisoning on 14 May 1986 and was laid to rest at the Mitinskoe Cemetery in Moscow.

Recognition

In 2008, Toptunov was posthumously awarded with the 3rd degree Order For Courage by Viktor Yushchenko, then the President of Ukraine.
He was portrayed by actor Volodya Stepanenko in the 2004 Zero Hour TV series. He was portrayed by Michael Colgan in the 2006 BBC production Surviving Disaster: Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster and by Robert Emms in the 2019 HBO miniseries Chernobyl.