I climbed onto Chernobyl’s roof with nothing but a lead sheet to protect me… I lived but was shunned for my heroism

IT was known as the Stairway To Hell – a suffocating chamber leading to the roof of Chernobyl’s reactor four, which had been decimated in a deadly explosion. Nearly 700 brave men ­huddled on the steps, armed with pickaxes and shovels, awaiting their turn to remove chunks of asphalt contaminated in the 1986 blast. They...