In May 1996 a colleague sent me an article from Chemical and Engineering News (C&EN) about the Chernobyl nuclear reactor accident. I set it aside, thoroughly intending to write about it at a later time. I might have totally forgotten about it had I not unexpectedly encountered a young man from Belarus who provided a real face and a real personality that I needed to identify with the catastrophe. Blasa was a round faced lad probably about eleven years old visiting from Belarus. His English was...