" But of the dozens of dangerous incidents that occurred inside Soviet nuclear facilities over the decades that followed, not one was ever mentioned to the IAEA. For almost thirty years, both the Soviet public and the world at large were encouraged to believe that the USSR operated the safest nuclear industry in the world. The cost of maintaining this illusion had been high. "

― Adam Higginbotham , Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster