Sam Troughton As Aleksandr Akimov, Shift Supervisor Of The Night Crew
Akimov was the shift supervisor on the night of the disaster. When he first received news that something was wrong, Akimov didn’t believe it. He even relayed false information to his superiors for several hours — a terrible mistake that he made up for later that night.
When he finally realized the gravity of the situation, he stayed behind to do everything he could to mitigate it. Akimov was the one who declared an emergency as soon as the reactor was shut down, though by then the damage had already been done. The reactor had exploded and was exposed, leaking extremely high levels of radiation.
Rather than evacuate, Akimov stayed behind. He had his crew turn on the emergency feedwater pumps to flood the reactor, but the power source was no longer active. Along with several of his fellow engineers, Akimov stayed in the poisonous air in the reactor building, manually pumping emergency feedwater into the reactor without any protective gear.
Akimov died two weeks later due to ARS