QUOTE : The academician had returned home from Chernobyl for the second time, on May 13, a changed man, his hands and face darkened by a radioactive tan, his ideological confidence shaken.16 With tears in his eyes, he described to his wife how overwhelmed they had been by the accident, how unprepared they were to protect the Soviet people from its consequences: the lack of clean water, uncontaminated food, and stable iodine. An examination at Hospital Number Six revealed the toxic fingerprint of the reactor deep within Legasov’s body: doctors found fission products, including iodine 131, cesium 134 and 137, tellurium 132, and ruthenium 103, in his hair, airways, and lungs.