Why was the goverment plays down on what happen to the chernobyl plant?

Question

Why was the goverment plays down on what happen to the chernobyl plant?

Answer 1

They thought in time they would find a better way to rectify it without external assistance. But of course it's too late.....

Answer 2

Which government? The Soviet Union government had a culture of secrecy that made it second nature for them to try to cover up the incident. Western governments play it down because frankly, the Chernobyl reactor set-up was shockingly unsafe, whereas ours are not, which makes it somewhat  irrelevant to us. Even so, the actual death-toll that directly resulted from the accident was not particularly high, when compared to similar-sized industrial accidents not involving nuclear materials. There is a lot of unwarranted public hysteria surrounding all things nuclear, so the government understates things in order to try and calm them down.