General, 85, portrayed in Sky Original’s Chernobyl still suffers crippling radiation disease more than 30 years after disaster
A SOVIET General portrayed in Sky Original’s hit Chernobyl show has revealed he still suffers from radiation sickness more than 30 years after the disaster.
Nikolai Tarakanov, 85, told how the deadly radiation left his gums bleeding for weeks after the meltdown – and is forced to take a gruelling regimen of drugs to just stay alive.
He claimed Soviet doctor Evgeny Chazov was right when he warned troops: “You’re going to suffer till the end of your life. Chernobyl won’t let you go.”
He told a documentary: “You made a tiny cut, while shaving, and it didn’t heal for two weeks after that.”
“I took all types of drugs. I have eight types of meds in the kitchen right now, which I take in the morning, at dinner and at night.
“I had bleeding gums and bloody diarrhoea.”
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Tarakanov oversaw the removal of radioactive material from the site – and paid tribute to the “perfect” casting in the show.
He added: “300,000 cubic meters of soil around the plant was extracted, put in trucks and taken to the burial sites.
“They were replaced with 300,000 cubic meters of crushed stone, which was sealed in concrete and covered with heavy concrete plates.”
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