Vassili Nesterenko

Vassili Nesterenko (2 December 1934 – 25 August 2008) was a Soviet and Belarusian physicist from Ukraine and a former director of the Institute of Nuclear Energy at the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus (1977–1987).

[1] Vassili Nesterenko (sometimes romanized as Vasilii) was born in Krasny Kut Village, Antratsyt Raion, Luhansk Oblast, Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (now Ukraine).

In 1972 Nesterenko was elected a corresponding member of Academy of Sciences of Byelorussian Soviet Socialistic Republic in the field of Nuclear Power Plants.

Since 1990, he had been the director of the Belarusian Independent Institute of "Belrad", created in 1989 with the help of Andrei Sakharov, Ales Adamovich and Anatoly Karpov.

As an expert on the subject and with his experience as a fire fighter, he threw liquid nitrogen containers from a helicopter on the burning reactor core.