JPRS-UEA-89-034

23 OCTOBER 1989

JPRS Report—

Soviet Union *
Economic Affairs
CHERNOBYL NOTEBOOK" BY G. MEDVEDEV,
PUBLISHED IN NOVY MIR, JUNE 1989

19980123 121
IjyHC QUALITY INSPECTED d

REPRODUCED BY
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE
NATIONAL TECHNICAL INFORMATION SERVICE
SPRINGFIELD, VA. 22161

tilfeTMOTION,STATEPfeM1 k
Approved for public release;
"Distribution Unlimited
 Soviet Union
Economic Affairs
-CHERNOBYL NOTEBOOK" BY G. MEDVEDEV, PUBLISHED IN NOVY MIR,
JUNE 1989
JPRS-UEA-89-034 CONTENTS 23 OCTOBER 1989

18220199 Moscow NOVY MIR in Russian No 6, June 1989 pp 3-108

["Abridged Version" of "Chernobyl Notebook," dated May 1987, by Grigoriy Medvedev; prefaces by S. Zalygin and
A. Sakharov, member of the USSR Academy of Sciences]
JPRS-UEA-034-89
23 October 1989

1987 "Chernobyl Notebook" Published conferences concerning nuclear power plant construc-
tion. Immediately after the accident, Medvedev was sent
18220199 Moscow NOVYY MIR in Russian to Chernobyl and had an opportunity to learn a great
No 6, Jun 89 pp 3-108 deal while the trail was still fresh and to see things with
["Abridged version" of "Chernobyl Notebook," dated his own eyes. He presents many technical details indis-
May 1987, by Grigoriy Medvedev; prefaces by S. Zalygin pensable to understanding the mechanism whereby the
and A. Sakharov, member of the USSR Academy of accident occurred, he exposes the secrets of bureaucratic
Sciences] relations, he tells about the oversights of scientists and
designers, about the disastrous overbearing pressure in
[Text] the command system, about the violations of glasnost
before the accident and in the emergency situation
Preface by S. Zalygin following it that have caused enormous harm. The
chronicle of events at Chernobyl in the tragic days of
It is not possible to avert disasters without knowing April and May 1986 takes up the central place in the
their causes and all the causal circumstances. By now, story. The author portrays the behavior and role of
this is clear to everyone, now this is one of the most numerous participants in the drama, of real living people
important principles of restructuring and of our with their shortcomings and virtues, their doubts, their
present-day existence. weaknesses, their illusions, and their heroism alongside
And if we do not want to betray our principles and the nuclear monster that had gone out of control. It is not
ourselves, there must be no exceptions here. Not a possible to read about this without the deepest emotion.
single one. We knew about the exploits of the firemen. The author
tells about the heroism of the electricians, the turbine
The possibility of one or two, well, perhaps three, excep- specialists, the operators, and other workers at the sta-
tions—after all, this does as a matter of fact have a tion who prevented the accident from taking on greater
calming effect on society, but what might that ease of proportions.
mind cost it in the future. Perhaps the immediate future.
Nothing other than a repetition of the disaster. It may Everything that pertains to the Chernobyl disaster, its
occur in a different version, but it will occur. causes and consequences, must become the property of
There is only one road here: the most thorough study of glasnost. The complete and naked truth is necessary.
all the details of the Chernobyl disaster, since it is by no People must be able to arrive at their own opinion of
means precluded that one of the details of it that is something that concerns so directly the life and health of
overlooked today will sometime be the main cause of the each of us and our descendants, and must have the right
next calamity or the one after that. to take part in making the key decisions that determine
the destiny of the country and the planet. Should nuclear
It was considerations of this kind that presented the power engineering develop at all? If so, then is it permis-
editors with the necessity of publishing G. U. sible to build reactors located on the surface (even if they
Medvedev's documentary narrative, although in some are considerably safer than the one at Chernobyl) or
respects it is not tactful and will wound some people's must they all be driven underground? These are all
pride and perhaps even their dignity, as it reveals the problems whose solution cannot be merely turned over
unsightly situation, whose "unsightliness" we will have to specialists, much less to departments with their nar-
to analyze over and over again, even if we have an inner rowly technical and biased approach that frequently is
reluctance to undertake that analysis. Yet why should we not devoid of special interest, with their coverup and
be reluctant when we are talking about the future of our interconnectedness (the same thing applies even to many
children and grandchildren? other exceedingly important problems of an ecological,
economic, and social nature). I am personally convinced
Yes, there is the dictate of the heart, there is the dictate that nuclear power engineering is indispensable to
of the mind, but there are harsh dictates of both mind humanity and must be developed, but only under con-
and heart. ditions of practically complete safety, which in real terms
demands that reactors be located underground. An inter-
Preface by A. Sakharov national law is needed that would prohibit location of
G.U. Medvedev's "Chernobyl Notebook" is a competent reactors on the surface. We must not move slowly.
and dispassionately truthful account of the tragedy that
occurred more than 3 years ago and which is continuing
to disturb millions of people. This is perhaps the first
time we have such a complete first-hand account in
which nothing is kept back and there is no departmental "The death of the Challenger crew and the accident at
"diplomacy." The author is a nuclear power specialist the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station...have intensified
who worked for a time at the Chernobyl AES and knows the anxiety and issued a harsh warning that men are still
it well, just as he is personally acquainted with all the just in the process of mastering those fantastic and
principal participants in the events. By virtue of his powerful forces which they themselves have brought to
official position, he has attended many of the crucial life, that they are just now learning to place them at the
 JPRS-UEA-034-89
23 October 1989

service of progress," Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev is used. Nuclear power plants are very promising with
said in his speech over central television on 18 August respect to the use of very large power generating units....
1986. As energy producers nuclear power plants are clean
sources of energy that do not increase the pollution of the
That was the first time in the 35 years of nuclear power environment." And he went on further: "A certain
engineering's development in the USSR that such an skepticism and mistrust of nuclear power plants which
exceedingly sober assessment of peacetime atomic still exist have been caused by excessive fear of the
energy had been made. For many years, our scientists radiation hazard for the plant's operating personnel and
had been reporting to us the exact opposite in the press above all for the population living in the area where it is
and over radio and television. Peaceful atomic energy located.... Operation of nuclear power plants in the
was presented to broad segments of the public as all but USSR and abroad, including the United States, England,
a panacea, as the acme of true safety, ecological purity, France, Canada, Italy, Japan, and East and West Ger-
and reliability. People were almost enthusiastic when many shows the complete safety of their operation
they talked about the safety of nuclear power plants. provided the established operating patterns and the
necessary rules are adhered to. What is more, there is
"Nuclear power plants are stars in the daytime!" M.A. some question as to which power plants are more
Styrikovich, member of the academy, exclaimed in 1980 harmful to the human organism and the environment—
in the magazine OGONEK. "We are planting our entire nuclear or coal-fired?..."1
earth with them. They are perfectly safe!"
They planted the earth with them.... A. Petrosyants failed to mention that thermal power
plants may be fired not only with coal and petroleum
"Atomic reactors are ordinary furnaces, and the opera- (incidentally, this pollution is local and is not menacing
tors controlling them are the stokers," was the popular at all), but also gas-fired, gas being produced in immense
explanation given to the broad public by N.M. Sinev, quantities in the USSR and, as is well-known, trans-
deputy chairman of the USSR State Committee for Use ported even to western Europe. Conversion of the
of Atomic Energy. This was a convenient position in all thermal plants in the European part of our country to gas
respects. First, it quieted public opinion; second, remu- could completely eliminate the problem of pollution of
neration at nuclear power plants couM be put on a par the environment with ash and sulfur dioxide. But A.
with thermal stations, and in a number of cases set even Petrosyants turned this problem upside down, devoting
lower. an entire chapter to pollution of the environment by
coal-fired plants, and saying nothing about the cases of
"The waste from nuclear power engineering, which is radioactive emissions from nuclear power plants which,
potentially very hazardous, is so compact that it can be of course, were well-known to him. This was done on
stored at places isolated from the external environment," behalf of the optimistic conclusion: "The data we have
O. Kazachkovskiy, director of the Energy Physics Insti- given above concerning the favorable radiation situation
tute, wrote in PRAVDA on 25 June 1984. We should in areas where the Novovoronezh and Beloyarsk Nuclear
note that when the Chernobyl explosion roared, there Power Plants are located are typical of all the nuclear
were no places where the spent nuclear fuel could be power plants in the Soviet Union. That same favorable
disposed of, and the storage facility had to be built radiation situation is also typical of nuclear power plants
alongside the unit where the accident occurred, in the of other countries...."
midst of fierce radiation fields, overexposing the con-
struction and installation workers. However, A. Petrosyants could not but have known that
"We live in the atomic age. Nuclear power stations have over its entire period of operation, beginning in 1964,
proven to be convenient and reliable to operate. Nuclear the first double-loop unit of the Beloyarsk AES had shut
reactors are preparing to take over the heating of down repeatedly: The uranium fuel assemblies had gone
cities...," O. Kazachkovskiy wrote in that same issue of awry, operating personnel received a severe overexpo-
PRAVDA. A. Sheydlin, member of the academy, reacted sure repairing them. This radioactive story lasted 15
as follows in LITERATURNAYA GAZETA to the years almost without interruption. Incidentally, at a
remark that expanded construction of nuclear power second unit of that same plant, this one a single-cycle
plants in suburban zones could alarm the population: unit, 50 percent of the fuel assemblies of the nuclear
"There is a lot of emotion involved here. Our country's reactor melted in 1977. The repair took about a year.
nuclear power stations are quite safe for the population Personnel of the Beloyarsk AES became overexposed
of surrounding areas. There simply is no reason to be rather quickly, and people had to be sent in from other
uneasy." nuclear power plants to do the dirty repair work. Nor
could he have failed to know that in the city of Melekess,
A. Petrosyants, chairman of the State Committee for Use Ulyanovsk Oblast, highly radioactive waste was being
of Atomic Energy, made his particular contribution to pumped into deep underground wells, that English
propagandizing the safety of nuclear power plants: nuclear reactors at Windscale, Winfrith, and Dounreay
"...nuclear power plants are altogether independent of had been discharging radioactive water into the Irish Sea
sources of raw materials (uranium mines) thanks to the ever since the fifties. A list of such cases could be
compactness of the nuclear fuel and the length of time it extended.
JPRS-UEA-034-89
23 October 1989

Not wishing to arrive at the result prematurely, I will say serious blow to nuclear power engineering and dispelled
only that it was A. Petrosyants who in a press conference the illusion of nuclear plant safety. At that time, I was
in Moscow on 6 May 1986, commenting on the Cher- working as department chief in the association Soy-
nobyl tragedy, uttered these words, which astounded uzatomenergo of USSR Minenergo [Ministry of Power
many: "Science requires sacrifices." Words that are and Electrification] and I remember my own reaction
unforgettable. and that of my colleagues to that unfortunate event.
Having worked for many years on the insulation, repair,
But let us continue. and operation of nuclear power plants, we knew to a
certainty how reliable they were, and this could be stated
Here is an excerpt from the memoirs of V.S. Yemely- briefly: the width of a blade, the width of a hair from an
anov, corresponding member of the USSR Academy of accident or disaster.... But neither I nor those who had
Sciences and deputy director of the Scientific Research worked previously in operating nuclear power plants had
Institute for Energy Technology: full information about that accident. The details about
the events in Pennsylvania were stated only in the
"Opponents of the development of nuclear power Information Sheet for internal consumption.
abroad and in our country sometimes win 'success' in
fighting the new. The best-known such success is the ban The question arises: What was the reason for making a
on starting up the nuclear power station in Austria which secret of an accident the whole world knew about? After
was adopted after a noisy antinuclear campaign. Western all, prompt appreciation of negative experience is a
journalists have now christened this nuclear plant the guarantee that the same thing will not recur in the future.
'billion dollar mausoleum.' (At this point, it is suitable to But it was kept secret: The adverse information was only
point out, Yemelyanov omitted one detail: The popula- for the top leadership, while the lower levels received
tion of Austria voluntarily paid off the cost of the nuclear truncated pieces of information that did not contradict
power plant with contributions, paying money into the the official position on the complete safety of nuclear
treasury after the government, which had paid off the power plants. Sensible voices were perceived as an attack
firms, mothballed the plant—G.M.) The development of on the prestige of science. Back in 1974, in a general
nuclear power engineering has not taken place in our annual assembly of the USSR Academy of Sciences, A.P.
country without overcoming difficulties either," V.S. Aleksandrov, member of the academy, said: "The charge
Yemelyanov admits. "At the end of the fifties, advocates is made against us that nuclear power is dangerous and
of traditional power engineering prepared and almost threatens radioactive pollution of the environment...
pushed through a decision of the CPSU Central Com- But, comrades, what will happen if there is a nuclear
mittee and USSR Council of Ministers to halt construc- war? What kind of pollution will there be then?"
tion of the Novovoronezh AES and to build an ordinary
TETs instead. The main line of argument was the low Amazing logic! Don't you think so?
economic efficiency of nuclear power plants at that time.
When Kurchatov learned about this, he set aside every- To be sure, 10 years later A.P. Aleksandrov was to
thing, went to the Kremlin, had a new conference of acknowledge in a meeting of the party aktiv of USSR
supervisory officials convened, and in a sharp discussion Minenergo (a year before Chernobyl): "God is still
with the doubting Thomases he achieved confirmation sparing us, comrades, in that we have not yet had a
of the previous decisions to build the nuclear power Pennsylvania. But, but...."
plant. One of the secretaries of the CPSU Central Com- You cannot deny that the member of the academy had a
mittee asked him at that time: 'And what will we get?' presentiment of disaster. There were ample grounds for
Kurchatov replied: 'Nothing! This will be an expensive presentiment: The capacity in nuclear power had grown
experiment for about 30 years.' Yet he got what he in unprecedented fashion, the hullabaloo of prestige had
wanted. It was not for nothing that many of us called Igor been inflated to the skies, and meanwhile the responsi-
Vasilyevich the 'nuclear reactor,' the 'human tank,' and bility of nuclear power people, it might be said, was on
even the 'bomb.'..."2 the decline. Indeed, where was it to come from, this
It is time to say that the optimistic forecasts and assur- responsibility, when everything at the nuclear power
ances of the scientists were never shared by the operating plant, it would seem, was so simple and harmless.... In
personnel of nuclear power stations, that is, by those who approximately those same years, there also began to be a
dealt directly with peaceful atomic energy on a daily change in the makeup of personnel operating nuclear
basis at their work station, not in the comfortable quiet power plants while at the same time there was a rapidly
growing shortage of nuclear operators. Whereas previ-
of offices and laboratories. ously those who were enthusiastic about nuclear power
During those years, information about accidents and had mainly gone to work there, those who had a pro-
defects at nuclear power stations was thoroughly filtered found love for this cause, now people were pouring in at
on the ministerial sieve of precaution; glasnost received random. It was not first and foremost money that
only what the top people considered had to be published. attracted, but prestige. It was as though people had
I remember well a landmark event in those years—the everything, had earned it elsewhere, but they still had not
accident at the American Three Mile Island Nuclear been a nuclear power worker. And they became special-
Power Plant on 28 March 1979, which dealt the first ists right off the street! Make way for brothers and sisters
 JPRS-UEA-034-89
23 October 1989

and godparents so that they can share in the pie of emergency seal on the quench tank ruptured, and about
management of the nuclear power industry! 370 m3 of hot radioactive water leaked onto the floor.
Enough of that, we will be coming back to it. And now "The sump pumps engaged automatically, the personnel
about Pennsylvania, Chernobyl's predecessor. I will should have immediately turned them off to keep all the
quote excerpts from the American magazine NUCLEAR radioactive water inside the containment, but this was
NEWS published on 6 April 1979: not done. The water covered the floor in a layer several
inches deep, began to evaporate, and radioactive gases
"...On 28 March 1979, a major accident occurred in reached the atmosphere along with steam, and that was
early morning in reactor unit No 2 with a capacity of 880 one of the main reasons for the subsequent radioactive
MW (electrical) at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Power contamination of the locality.
Plant, located 20 km from the city of Harrisburg (Penn-
sylvania) and owned by the Metropolitan Edison Co.... "At the instant the safety valve opened, the system for
Unit No 2 at Three Mile Island, as it turned out, was not emergency safety of the reactor cut in and inserted the
equipped with the supplemental system to guarantee control rods; the chain reaction therefore halted, and the
safety although there were such systems on some of the reactor was practically shut down. The process of nuclear
units at that plant.... fission of uranium in the fuel rods ceased, but nuclear
fission of fragments continued.... The safety valve
"In the words of energy secretary Schlesinger, radioac- remained open, the water level in the reactor vessel
tive contamination of the locality around the plant was dropped, the temperature rose rapidly. This apparently
'extremely limited' in its intensity and extent, and there formed a steam-water mixture which wrecked the
was no basis whatsoever for the population to be uneasy. reactor coolant pumps, and they shut down.
However, in the course of only 31 March and 1 April
about 80,000 people left their homes out of the 200,000 "As soon as the pressure fell, the system cut in for
persons living within a radius of 35 km of the plant. emergency cooling of the core, and the fuel assemblies
People refused to believe the representatives of the began to cool. This occurred 2 minutes into the event.
Metropolitan Edison Co., who were trying to persuade (Here, the situation resembles that at Chernobyl 20
them that nothing terrible had happened. By order of the seconds before the explosion. But at Chernobyl the
state's governor, a plan was drawn up for emergency personnel had turned off the system for emergency
evacuation of the population of the entire borough. cooling of the core ahead of time.—G.M.)
Seven schools were closed in the county where the plant
is located. The governor ordered evacuation of all preg- "The water was still evaporating from the reactor. The
nant women and children of preschool age living within operators were unsuccessful in closing the apparently
a radius of 5 miles of the station and that people living jammed safety valve by remote control. The water level
within 10 miles should remain indoors. These actions dropped in the reactor, and one-third of the core was
were taken pursuant to an instruction of NRC chairman uncovered. The protective zirconium jackets of the fuel
J. Hendrie after a leakage of radioactive gases into the assemblies began to crack and crumble. Highly radioac-
atmosphere was observed. The most critical situation tive fission products began to leak out of the damaged
took shape 30-31 March and 1 April, when an immense heat-generating elements. The water in the primary loop
hydrogen bubble threatening to blow up the reactor shell became still more radioactive. The temperature in the
formed in the reactor vessel; in such a case, the entire reactor vessel exceeded 400°, and the indicators on the
vicinity would have been subjected to very intense control panel went off the scale. The computer moni-
radioactive contamination...." toring the temperature in the core began to display
strings of question marks and continued to generate
Excerpts from the description of the accident. them for the next 11 hours....
"...The first signs of the accident were observed at 0400 "On the night between 28 and 29 March, a gas bubble
hours, when for unknown reasons the main feedwater began to form in the upper part of the reactor vessel. The
pumps stopped supplying water to the steam generator. core had burned away to such an extent that water
All three emergency pumps had been undergoing repairs molecules were splitting into hydrogen and oxygen
for 3 weeks, which was a very flagrant violation of because of the chemical properties of the zirconium
nuclear plant operating rules. jacket of the rods. A bubble about 30 m3 in size,
consisting mainly of hydrogen and radioactive gases—
"As a consequence, the steam generator could not draw krypton, argon, xenon, and others—began to greatly
off from the primary loop the heat the reactor was frustrate the circulation of coolant, since pressure in the
generating. The turbine tripped. The temperature and reactor had risen substantially. But the main danger was
pressure of the reactor's primary loop rose sharply. A that a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen could explode at
mixture of superheated water and steam began to dump any moment (which is what happened at Chernobyl—
through the safety valve into a special tank (quench G.M.). The force of the explosion would have been
tank), but after the water pressure dropped to normal, equivalent to the explosion of 3 tons of TNT, which
the valve did not seat, and as a consequence pressure in would inevitably have destroyed the reactor vessel.
the quench tank also rose higher than was allowed. The Another possibility was that the mixture of hydrogen and
JPRS-UEA-034-89
23 October 1989

oxygen might escape from the reactor and accumulate 3 January 1961. Steam explosion in an experimental
under the dome of the containment. If it exploded there, reactor near Idaho Falls, Idaho. Three people killed.
all the radioactive fission products would have reached 5 October 1966. Partial melt of the core because of a
the atmosphere (which is what happened at Chernobyl— breakdown of the cooling system on the "Enrico Fermi"
G M) The level of radiation within the containment Reactor, not far from Detroit.
had by that time reached 30,000 rems per hour, which
exceeded the fatal dose by a factor of 600. What is more, 19 November 1971. Almost 200,000 liters of water
if the bubble continued to grow, it would gradually drive contaminated with radioactive substances spilled into
all the coolant out of the reactor vessel, and then the the Mississippi River from an overflowing reactor waste
temperature would rise to the point where the uranium storage facility at Monticello, Minnesota.
would melt (which occurred at Chernobyl—G.M.).
28 March 1979. Core melt because of cooling loss of the
"On the night of 30 March, the size of the bubble reactor at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Plant. Dis-
decreased by 20 percent, and on 2 April it was only 1.4 charge of radioactive gases into the atmosphere and of
m3 in size. The technicians used a method called water liquid radioactive waste into the Susquehanna River.
degassing to finally eliminate the bubble and remove the Evacuation of the population from the disaster area.
danger of an explosion....
7 August 1979. About 1,000 people received a dose of
"...President Carter visited the plant on 1 April. He irradiation sixfold higher than the norm because highly
called upon the population for 'calm and precise' obser- enriched uranium was dumped from a plant for the
vance of all the rules of an evacuation should the need production of nuclear fuel near the city of Erwin, Ten-
for it arise. nessee.
"In a speech on 5 April devoted to energy problems, 25 January 1982. Discharge of radioactive steam into the
President Carter dwelled in detail on such alternative atmosphere occurred near Rochester because a steam
methods as the use of solar energy, the processing of generator pipe ruptured on the reactor of the Ginna
bituminous shale, coal gasification, and so on, but he plant.
made no mention of nuclear energy at all, neither the
splitting of the atomic nucleus nor controlled thermonu- 30 January 1982. Alert at the nuclear power station near
clear synthesis. Ontario, New York. Radioactive substances leaked into
the atmosphere because of a breakdown in the reactor
"Many senators declared that the accident could bring cooling system.
an 'agonizing reassessment' of the attitude toward
nuclear power engineering, but, as they put it, the 28 February 1985. Critical state reached prematurely at
country would be forced to continue generating electric the Samer plant, that is, an uncontrollable nuclear reac-
power at nuclear plants, since there was no other way out tion, or runaway reactor, occurred.
for the United States. The ambiguous position of the 19 May 1985. There was a leakage of radioactive water at
senators on this issue is vivid evidence of the difficult the Indian Point 2 Nuclear Plant near New York, which
position in which the U.S. Government felt itself after belongs to the Consolidated Edison Co. The accident
the accident...." occurred because of a malfunction in a valve and caused
Let us glance at the 35 years that have passed since the a leakage of several hundred gallons, even outside the
early fifties: Were Pennsylvania and Chernobyl so acci- nuclear plant.
dental, have accidents occurred at nuclear plants in the 1986. Webbers Falls. Explosion of a tank containing
United States and the USSR over those 35 years which radioactive gas at a uranium enrichment plant. One man
can serve as a lesson and prevent people from a lax
approach to this extremely complicated problem of the killed. Eight injured.
present time? In the Soviet Union
If we look at the history of the nuclear power industry's 7 May 1966. Uncontrolled prompt-neutron reaction at
development, we see that accidents in nuclear reactors the nuclear power plant with boiling-water reactor in the
actually began immediately after their appearance. city of Melekess. Dosimeter operator and shift chief of
the nuclear plant irradiated. Reactor shut down by
In the United States of America dumping two bags of boric acid into it.
1951. Detroit. Research reactor accident. Overheating of 1964-1979. Over a 15-year period, repeated rupture
fissionable material because the allowed temperature (burning) of the fuel assemblies of the core of Unit 1 at
was exceeded. Contamination of the air with radioactive the Beloyarsk AES. Operating personnel were overirra-
gases. diated in repairing the core.
24 June 1959. Melting of some of the fuel elements as a 7 January 1974. Explosion of the reinforced-concrete
result of a breakdown of the cooling system at the gasholder which served as a holding tank for radioactive
experimental power reactor at Santa Susana, California. gases in Unit 1 at the Leningrad AES. No casualties.
 JPRS-UEA-034-89
23 October 1989

6 February 1974. Rupture of the intermediate loop in The situation in which accidents at nuclear power plants
Unit 1 at the Leningrad AES when the water boiled up were kept secret from the public became the norm under
and was followed by water hammer. Three were killed. USSR Minister of Energy and Electrification P.S. Nep-
Highly radioactive water was dumped into the environ- orozhnyy. Accidents were concealed not only from the
ment together with filter powder slurry. public and the government, but also from personnel at
the country's nuclear power plants, which is particularly
October 1975. Partial breakdown of the core ("local flaw dangerous, since the lack of information about bad
in the metal") at Unit 1 of the Leningrad AES. The experience always threatens the unpredictable. Nep-
reactor was shut down, and for a day the nitrogen used in orozhnyy's successor in the ministerial post, A.I. May-
the emergency was blown into the atmosphere through orets, a man who was not altogether competent in power
the vent pipe. About 1.5 million curies of highly radio- industry matters, especially those of the nuclear power
active radionuclides were emitted into the environment. industry, continued the tradition of silence. He had not
been in the position more than 6 months when he
1977. Meltdown of half of the fuel assemblies of the core ordered a ban on open publication in the press and radio
at Unit 2 of the Beloyarsk AES. Repairs, during which and television broadcasting about the adverse results of
personnel of the AES were overirradiated, took about a the environmental impact on personnel and the general
year. population and also on the environment of power facil-
ities (the impact of electromagnetic fields, irradiation,
31 December 1978. Unit 2 of the Beloyarsk AES and pollution of the air, water, and soil).
destroyed by fire. The fire started when the ceiling slab of
the turbine room fell on the turbine's oil reservoir. The A.I. Mayorets made this dubious ethical position the
entire control cable burned up. That eliminated control foundation of his activity from the first months of his
of the reactor. Eight persons received overdoses orga- work in the new ministry. He operated within the
nizing the emergency flow of coolant into the reactor. framework of the system that had long been in place. It
was Socrates in ancient times who said: "Every man is
September 1982. Rupture of the central fuel assembly of wise about what he knows well." Once he had himself
Unit 1 at the Chernobyl AES because of operator errors. secure, the first thing A.I. Mayorets did was to eliminate
Emission of radioactivity into the industrial zone and within USSR Minenergo Glavniiproyekt—the main
city of Pripyat, and repair personnel also received an administration that had been doing project planning and
overdose repairing the "small salamander." scientific research, leaving this important sector of engi-
neering and scientific activity to get along on its own.
October 1982. Generator explosion at Unit 1 of the That was not all. By cutting back on repair of power
Armenian AES. Turbine room burned. Most of the plant equipment, he increased the coefficient of utiliza-
operating personnel fled the station in panic, leaving the tion of installed capacity, thereby reducing the backup
reactor without supervision. A team arriving by plane capacity at the country's power plants, sharply increasing
from the Koli Nuclear Power Plant helped the operators the risk of a major breakdown.
who had stayed on the scene to save the reactor.
Deputy Chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers
27 June 1985. Accident at Unit 1 at the Balakovo B.Ye. Shcherbina, an experienced administrator, unmer-
Nuclear Power Plant. The safety valve blew when startup cifully exacting, automatically transferred to the power
and adjustment operations were being conducted, and industry methods of management from the gas industry,
steam at 300° began to enter the room where people were where he had been minister for a long time. Shcherbina
working. Fourteen people were killed. The accident really has a fierce bite, imposing on nuclear power plant
occurred because of unusual haste and nervousness builders his own deadlines for starting up the power-
following mistakes by inexperienced operating per- generating units, and when the deadline passed, he
sonnel. would accuse them of reneging on "obligations they had
assumed."
All the accidents at nuclear power plants in the USSR
went unpublicized except for the accidents in the first I recall a conference on 20 February 1986 in the Kremlin
units at the Armenian and Chernobyl plants in 1982, where nuclear power plant managers and chiefs of power
which were mentioned in passing in a PRAVDA edito- plant construction projects followed a kind of rule: the
rial, and that was after Yu.V. Andropov was elected plant manager or project chief presenting the report
general secretary of the CPSU Central Committee. In would speak no more than 2 minutes, and Shcherbina,
addition, there was an indirect mention of the accident who would interrupt them, would talk for 35-40 minutes
at Unit 1 of the Leningrad Nuclear Power Plant in at least.
March 1976 in a meeting of the party aktiv of USSR
Minenergo at which A.N. Kosygin, chairman of the The most interesting speech was delivered by R.G.
USSR Council of Ministers, spoke. One of the things that Khenokh, chief of the Construction Administration of
he said at that time was that the governments of Sweden the Zaporozhye AES, who screwed up his courage and in
and Finland had made an inquiry with the USSR Gov- a heavy bass voice (a bass voice was regarded as a breach
ernment concerning the rise in radioactivity over their of tact in such a conference) announced that the third
countries. unit at the Zaporozhye AES would be started up no
JPRS-UEA-034-89
23 October 1989

earlier than August 1986 at best (the actual startup nuclear. The nuclear direction in power plant construc-
occurred 30 December 1986) because equipment had tion has been managed by Deputy Minister A.N.
been delivered late and the computer complex was not Semenov, who was appointed to this complicated job 4
ready and was just then being installed. "Well, what do years ago since by education and many years of experi-
you think of that, what a hero!" Shcherbina exclaimed ence he was a hydropower plant builder. (In January
outraged. "He is setting his own deadlines!" And his 1987, he was removed from supervision of construction
voice heightened to a scream: "Who gave you the right, of nuclear power plants on the basis of 1986 results,
Comrade Khenokh, to set your own deadlines instead of when power capacities were not activated on schedule.)
those of the government?" "The deadlines are dictated
by the way in which the work has to be done," the Nor are things what they should be in the department
construction project chief persisted. "Cut it out! You which on the eve of the disaster was supervising opera-
can't fool me! The government deadline is May 1986. tion of nuclear power plants on line (known by its
You will be so kind as to start it up in May!" "But abbreviation—the VPO Soyuzatomenergo). Its chief was
delivery of the special fitting will only be completed at G.A. Veretennikov, who had never had a job in opera-
the end of May," Khenokh rejoined. "Make the delivery tion of a nuclear power plant. He did not know nuclear
earlier!" And Shcherbina turned to Mayorets, who was technology and after working for 15 years in USSR
sitting beside him: "Take note, Anatoliy Ivanovich, your Gosplan, he decided to go over to the practical side. (In
construction project chiefs are covering themselves with July 1986, he was expelled from the party and removed
the lack of equipment and are not meeting deadlines...." from his post.)
"We will put a stop to that, Boris Yevdokimovich,"
Mayorets promised. "It is hard to see how one can build Even after the Chernobyl accident, in July 1986, B.Ye.
a nuclear power plant and put it into operation without Shcherbina exclaimed from the speaker's stand in an
equipment.... After all, it is not I who delivers the expanded collegium of USSR Minenergo, turning to the
equipment, but the industry through the customer," power industry people sitting in the audience: "You have
Khenokh muttered and despondently took his seat. It been marching toward Chernobyl all these years!" If that
was after the conference against the background of the is the case, then it should be added that the entire
Kremlin that he told me: "This is our national tragedy. atmosphere in the nuclear power industry speeded up
We ourselves lie and we teach our subordinates to lie. No that march.
good will come of this." I remind the reader that this
conversation took place 2 months before the Chernobyl I deem it necessary to familiarize the reader with
disaster. excerpts from an article by F. Olds entitled "On Two
Approaches to Nuclear Power," which was published in
In April 1983,1 wrote an article about creeping planning the journal POWER ENGINEERING back in October
in construction of nuclear power plants and offered it to 1979:
one of the central newspapers. The article was not
accepted. Here is a brief quote: "While the member countries of the Organization for
Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) have
"What are the reasons for the unrealistic planning in the been confronting numerous difficulties in carrying out
nuclear construction sector and for the persistent failures their nuclear programs, the CEMA member countries
lasting for decades? There are three of them. have undertaken to carry out a joint plan that envisages
an increase in installed capacity of nuclear power plants
"1. The incompetence of the people who plan the acti- by 150,000 MW by 1990 (this is more than one-third of
vation of power capacity and who manage the sector of the present capacity of all nuclear power plants on the
nuclear power plant construction. globe)....
"2. The unreality and as a consequence creep of plan- "The USSR Academy of Sciences—though this should
ning, caused by the incompetence of the assessments. have been expected—is assuring the general public that
"3. Machinebuilding ministries are not ready to produce Soviet nuclear reactors are absolutely reliable and that
equipment for nuclear power plants in the quantity the consequences of the accident at the Three Mile
Island Nuclear Power Plant were overdramatized in the
required and the requisite quality...." foreign press. A.P. Aleksandrov, distinguished Soviet
The fact that incompetence is directly related both to the atomic scientist, president of the Academy of Sciences,
quality and the realism of the plan and also to the safety and director of the Atomic Energy Institute imeni I.V.
of nuclear plants is more than obvious, but unfortunately Kurchatov, recently gave an interview to the London
there have had to be repeated reminders of this. After all, correspondent of the newspaper WASHINGTON
many management posts in the nuclear industry are held STAR.... He is convinced that world petroleum and gas
by unqualified people. reserves will be depleted in between 30 and 50 years, so
that nuclear power plants have to be built in all parts of
For instance, the central headquarters of USSR Minen- the world, otherwise military conflicts will inevitably
ergo, including the minister and a number of his depu- occur over possession of what is left of mineral fuel. He
ties, has been incompetent about matters specifically feels that these armed conflicts will occur only between
 JPRS-UEA-034-89
23 October 1989

capitalist countries, since the USSR will by that time What is more, we will be building nuclear heating plants,
have an abundant supply of nuclear power. thereby saving on valuable organic fuel in short supply—
gas and oil." The vigorous posing of the issue of devel-
"The OECD and CEMA organizations are working in opment of nuclear power forces us to reflect again and
opposite directions. again, to look at the Chernobyl lesson, at the causes, the
"CEMA is placing principal emphasis on development nature, and consequences of the disaster which all of us,
all of humanity, experienced at a nuclear power plant in
of nuclear power and pays no great importance to the
prospects for use of solar energy and other variants of a the Ukrainian Polesie.
gradual transition to alternative sources of energy That is what we will attempt to do. Day by day, hour by
supply.... hour, we will be seeing how events developed in the days
"For many years, the United States was the leader and nights before and during the accident.
among the OECD member countries both in the field of
practical use of atomic energy and also with respect to
the size of appropriations for R&D. But then the situa-
tion changed rather quickly, and now development of 25 April 1986
nuclear power is not regarded in the United States as a On the eve of the disaster, my job was deputy chief of the
priority task of state importance, but only as an extreme Main Production Administration of USSR Minenergo
means of solving the energy problem. Principal attention for nuclear power plant construction.
in discussion of any piece of legislation that has to do
with energy is devoted to environmental protection. In the evening of 25 April 1986, at 1650 hours (8.5 hours
Thus, the leading member countries of the OECD and before the explosion) I was returning from Simferopol to
CEMA are taking up diametrically opposed positions Moscow in an IL-86 airplane following inspection of
with respect to development of the nuclear power indus- construction and installation work at the Crimean AES.
try...." I do not recall any presentiments or uneasiness at all.
There was a strong smell of kerosene, to be sure, on
The positions are, of course, not diametrically opposite, takeoff and landing. During the flight, the sky was ideally
especially on matters concerning improvement of clear. The only slight irritation was the unceasing rattle
nuclear power plant safety. F. Olds is inaccurate here; of the maladjusted elevator that carried the stewardesses
both sides are paying maximum attention to this issue. and stewards up and down with refreshing beverages.
But there are in fact indubitable differences in assess- There was a great deal of commotion in what they did,
ments of the problem of development of nuclear power: they seemed to be making extra work.
• excessive criticism and a patent overstatement of the We flew over the Ukraine, which was buried in its
danger of nuclear plants in the United States, flowering gardens. Some 7 or 8 hours would pass, and a
• in the USSR, complete absence of criticism for 3.5 new era would begin for that region, an era of misery and
decades and a clearly understated danger of nuclear nuclear contamination. Meanwhile, I was looking down
power plants to personnel and to the environment. at the ground through the window. Kharkov floated by
The very pronounced conformism of our public, which below in a bluish haze. I remember regretting that Kiev
has placed unquestioning belief in the academicians, is was off to one side. There, 130 km from Kiev, I had
surprising. Is this why Chernobyl came down on us like worked in the seventies as deputy chief engineer on the
a bolt from the blue and so devastated many people? first power-generating unit of the Chernobyl AES and
lived on Lenin Street in Pripyat, in the first residential
But it did not devastate everyone. Unfortunately, the district (which received the greatest radioactive contam-
conformity and gullibility are still with us. What are you ination following the explosion).
going to do? It is easier to believe than to submit to sober
doubt. Less trouble for one thing.... The Chernobyl AES is located on the eastern side of a
large region called the Belorussian-Ukrainian Polesie, on
At the 41st Session of CEMA, which was held 4 the bank of the Pripyat River, a tributary of the Dnieper.
November 1986 in Bucharest, the chairman of the USSR These are mainly plains areas with a relatively flat relief,
Council of Ministers, noting the absence of an alterna- with a very slight slope of the surface toward the river
tive to nuclear power, said in particular: and its tributaries. The total length of the Pripyat to
where it flows into the Dnieper is 748 km. The size of the
"The tragedy at Chernobyl has not only not canceled the catchment at the nuclear plant's section line is 106,000
future for nuclear power in cooperation, but, on the km2. This is the area from which the radioactivity will be
contrary, having placed the problems of ensuring greater going below the surface and also from which it will be
safety at the center of attention, is strengthening its washed by rain and snowmelt....
importance as the only source of energy that guarantees
reliable supply in the future.... The socialist countries are The splendid Pripyat River! Its water is brown, appar-
becoming still more actively involved in international ently because it flows out of Polesian peat bogs, the
cooperation in this field, taking as their point of depar- current is strong and fast; when you swim, it tries to carry
ture the recommendations we have made in the IAEA.... you away. After a swim, your skin is stretched tight, and
JPRS-UEA-034-89
23 October 1989

it makes a scraping sound when you rub it with your That day, 25 April 1986, they were preparing to shut
hand. I have done a lot of swimming in that water and down the fourth power-generating unit for regular pre-
rowed in the academy's boats. If you stop rowing and ventive maintenance.
scoop up some of the astringent brown water with your While the unit was shut down, in accordance with a
hand, your skin immediately tightens from the bog acids program approved by Chief Engineer N.M. Fomin, tests
(which later, following explosion of the reactor and the were to be run to completely deprive the power plant's
radioactive discharge, became good coagulants—carriers equipment of power while the reactor's safety systems
of radioactive particles and fission fragments). were turned off. The energy of the coasting of the
turbogenerator rotor (rotation by inertia) was to be used
But let us return to a description of the locality. This is to generate electric power. Incidentally, the performance
quite important. The water table, which is used here for of such an experiment had been proposed to many
residential water supply, lies at a depth of 10-15 meters nuclear power plants, but because of the experiment's
below the level of the Pripyat River and is separated riskiness, they had all refused. The management of the
from Quaternary deposits by almost impermeable clayey Chernobyl plant had agreed.
marls.3 This means that once radioactivity reaches that
depth, it will be carried away by the groundwater.... What was the nature of the experiment, and why was it
necessary?
In the Polesie, the population density is low; approxi-
mately 70 persons per square kilometer before construc- The reason was that if the nuclear plant should suddenly
tion began on the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. On be without power, all the machinery would, of course,
the eve of the disaster, there were already about 110,000 stop, including the pumps pumping coolant water
persons within a 30-km radius of the nuclear power through the reactor core. As a consequence, there would
plant, nearly half of them living in Pripyat, which is to be a meltdown of the core, which is equivalent to the
the west of the 3-km public health zone of the power worst case scenario envisaged by the design (MPA). Use
plant, and 13,000 in the rayon center of Chernobyl, of any possible sources of electric power in such cases
which is 18 km to the southwest. was in fact envisaged by the experiment with the
coasting of the turbogenerator rotor. After all, so long as
the generator rotor is turning, electric power is being
I have often recalled Pripyat, a little town where nuclear generated. It can and must be used in critical cases. The
power plant people live. It was built almost from nothing coasting regime is one of the subsystems in the MPA.
while I was there. When I left for Moscow, three residen-
tial districts had already been built and occupied. A Such tests had been conducted even earlier at the Cher-
pleasant little town, nice to live in and very clean. One nobyl plant and other nuclear power plants, but with the
would often hear newcomers say: "What a lovely place reactor's safety systems in operation. And everything
Pripyat is!" Many retirees longed to come here and did had gone well. I myself have had occasion to take part in
come to live permanently. Sometimes they had difficulty them.
obtaining the right from government institutions and
even the courts to live in this little paradise, which Usually the programs for such operations are prepared in
combines a beautiful natural setting with felicitous bless- advance and cleared with the reactor's chief designer, the
ings in town planning. power plant's general project planner, and Gosatomen-
ergonadzor. In these cases, the program obligatorily
Quite recently, on 25 March 1986, I had checked envisages backup power supply while the experiment is
progress at the fifth power-generating unit being built at being conducted. That is, depriving the power plant of
the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. There was still that power during the tests is only a supposition, it does not
same freshness of the intoxicatingly clean air, still the in fact occur. Assuming proper procedure for perfor-
same quiet and agreeableness of what now was no longer mance of the operations and additional safety measures,
a settlement, but a city with a population of 50,000.... such tests were not prohibited at an operating nuclear
power plant.
Kiev and the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant were over We should immediately emphasize that the tests with the
to the northwest of our flight path. Memories receded, coasting of the generator rotor could be conducted only
the huge cabin of the airliner became reality. Two aisles, after the reactor was extinguished, that is, after the point
three rows of half-empty seats. It was like being in a huge when the emergency safety (AZ) button is pressed and
barn. If you shouted, you would get an echo. Close at the control rods enter the core. In advance of that, the
hand, the constant rumble and rattling of the elevator, reactor must be in a stable controllable regime and have
rushing back and forth, so that you seem not to be flying the regulation reactivity margin.
in an airplane, but traveling in a huge half-empty taran-
tass over a blue cobblestone road. And the milk cans Several necessary clarifications for the general reader.
were rumbling behind in the rack.
Put simply, the core of the RBMK4 reactor is a cylinder
I reached home from the Vnukovo Airport by 2100 14 meters in diameter and 7 meters high. The inside of
hours. Five hours before the explosion. that cylinder is filled with the nuclear fuel and graphite.
10 JPRS-UEA-034-89
23 October 1989

Holes extending the entire length of the cylinder (pipes) But let us go back to the test program. We will try to
are uniformly distributed over the cross section of the understand why it had not been cleared with the superior
cylinder, and the control rods which absorb neutrons organizations, with those who along with the manage-
move in those channels. When all the rods are down (that ment of the nuclear power plant bore responsibility for
is, within the core), the reactor is shut down. As the rods nuclear safety not only of the plant itself, but also of the
are withdrawn, the chain reaction of nuclear fission state.
begins, and the power of the reactor grows. The higher
the rods are withdrawn, the greater the reactor's power. In January 1986, V.P. Bryukhanov, manager of the
plant, sent the program of the tests for clearance to the
When the reactor is loaded with fresh fuel, its reactivity general designer at Gidroproyekt and to Gosatomener-
margin (put simply—capacity for growth of neutron gonadzor. No answer came. This disturbed neither the
power) exceeds the ability of the control rods to stifle the management of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant nor
reaction. In this case, a portion of the fuel (fuel assem- the operating association Soyuzatomenergo. Nor did this
blies) is withdrawn, and stationary absorbing rods disturb Gidroproyekt and Gosatomenergonadzor.
(referred to as supplemental absorbers—DP's) are
inserted in their place so as to help the rods that move. At this point, it seems we can allow ourselves far-
As the uranium is consumed, these supplemental reaching conclusions: Irresponsibility in all these insti-
absorbers are withdrawn and nuclear fuel is installed in tutions of the state had reached such a level that they
considered it possible to keep silent, not to invoke any
their place.
penalties whatsoever, even though the general designer
and the general client (the VPO Soyuzatomenergo) and
But there is an unalterable rule: As the fuel is consumed, Gosatomenergonadzor possess such rights, and it is
the number of control rods inserted in the core must not moreover their direct obligation. But there are specific
be less than 28-30 (since the Chernobyl accident, this individuals in these organizations who bear responsi-
number has been increased to 72), since a situation can
occur at any moment in which the fuel's ability to bility. Who are they?
increase the power proves to be greater than the In Gidroproyekt—the general designer of the Chernobyl
absorbing ability of the control rods. Nuclear Power Plant—V.S. Konviz was responsible for
nuclear power plant safety. He is an experienced
These 28-30 rods, which are in the zone of high effec- designer of hydroplants, a candidate of engineering sci-
tiveness, represent in fact the operational reactivity ences specializing in hydraulic engineering installations.
margin. In other words, in all stages of the reactor's For many years (from 1972 to 1982), he was director of
operation its capacity for excursion must not exceed the the nuclear power plant design sector, and since 1983 he
ability of the control rods to shut down the reactor. has been responsible for nuclear power plant safety. In
the seventies, when he began to design nuclear power
The question arises: Why did previous tests of this kind, plants, Konviz hardly had an elementary notion about
including those at Chernobyl, occur without incident? what a nuclear reactor is, and he mainly hired specialists
The answer is simple: the reactor was in a stable control- in the design of hydraulic installations to do this work.
lable state, the entire set of safety systems remained in On this point, everything is presumably clear. Such a
operation. man could not foresee the possibilities of disaster con-
tained in the program and indeed in the reactor itself.
The program approved by N.M. Fomin, chief engineer of
the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, did not meet either In Soyuzatomenergo—the association of the USSR Min-
of these requirements. The section of the program con- istry of Power and Electrification which operates nuclear
cerning safety measures was written in formal terms, no power plants and is actually responsible for everything
additional measures were envisaged, what is more—the done by operating personnel—the senior official was
program called for turning off the SAOR (emergency G.A. Veretennikov, a man who has never been involved
reactor cooling system), and that meant that during the in operating a nuclear power plant. From 1970 to 1982,
entire period of the tests—about 4 hours—the reactor's he worked in USSR Gosplan, where he planned deliv-
safety would be essentially reduced. What is more, as will eries of equipment for nuclear power plants. Things did
be evident from the discussion below, plant personnel not go well for various reasons, year after year only half
deviated even from the program itself, creating addi- of the equipment was delivered. Veretennikov was often
tional conditions for an accident to occur. sick, he had, as they say, a "bad head," the blood vessels
of the brain were subject to spasms. But his inner drive
Nor were the operators fully aware that the RBMK to occupy a high post seems to have been strongly
reactor possesses a series of positive reactivity effects developed. In 1982, he filled the vacant combined job of
which in certain cases come into play simultaneously, deputy minister and chief of the association Soy-
causing what is called a positive shutdown, that is, an uzatomenergo. It proved to be beyond his strength, the
explosion, in which the reactor's ability to accelerate far spasms of vessels in the brain began once again, fainting
exceeds the ability of the safety systems to shut it down. spells, the Kremlin hospital. One of the veterans of
This prompt power effect did in fact play its deadly Glavatomenergo, Yu. Izmaylov, has remarked in this
role.... connection: "Under Veretennikov, it became almost
 11
JPRS-UEA-034-89
23 October 1989

No one reacted, as if by agreement. What are we dealing

impossible to find a nuclear expert in the main admin- with here? We are dealing with a conspiracy of silence.
istration who was an expert on reactors and nuclear
When there is no glasnost, then there are no lessons.
physics. At the same time, the bookkeeping department, Thus, there are no accidents either. Everything is safe,
the supply department, and the planning department
everything is reliable. It was not in vain that Abu Tahb
grew by leaps and bounds...." In 1984, the additional
said- Whoever shoots a pistol at the past will be gunned
post of deputy minister was eliminated, and Vereten- down by the future. I would rephrase it for nuclear power
nikov became simply the chief of the association Soy-
industry people in particular: In their case, the future
uzatomenergo. His fainting spells became more fre-
will strike them with a nuclear reactor explosion. A
quent, and he spent a long time in the hospital.
nuclear disaster.
Not long before Chernobyl, this is how Ye.S. Ivanov,
chief of the production department of Soyuzatomenergo, Another detail has to be added here, one which has not
justified the increasingly frequent emergency situations been mentioned in any of the technical reports on what
at nuclear power plants: "Not a single nuclear power happened. Here is that detail: The regime with the
plant fully adheres to the operating regulations. This is spinning rotor of the generator and with emergency
indeed impossible. Operating experience is constantly safety systems practically inoperative had been planned
making its own corrections and adjustments...." in advance and was not only reflected in the test pro-
gram, the technical preparations had even been made.
It took the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl to hurl Vereten- Two weeks before the experiment the MPA (maximum
nikov out of the party and out of his position as chief of emergency envisaged by the design) button had been
Soyuzatomenergo. inserted into the panel of the large control board of
generating Unit 4; it was wired only to the secondary
At Gosatomenergonadzor, a rather sophisticated and power circuits, but not the monitoring and measuring
experienced group had formed, headed by committee instruments and the pumps. That is, the signal produced
chairman Ye.V. Kulov, a nuclear physicist, who had
worked for a long time on nuclear reactors belonging to by that button was just a simulation.
Minsredmash. But, however strange it may seem, even
Kulov paid no attention to the half-baked program for Let us explain once again for the general reader: When
tests that had come from Chernobyl. Why? After all, the the emergency safety system (AZ) is activated, all 211
regulation on Gosatomenergonadzor, approved by control rods fall downward, cooling water shoots in,
emergency pumps are turned on, and the diesel genera-
Decree No 409 of the USSR Council of Ministers on 4
May 1984, provided that the committee's main task was tors providing reliable electric power are started up.
"state supervision over observance by all ministries, Emergency pumps supplying water from the clean con-
departments, enterprises, organizations, institutions, densate tanks and pumps supplying water from the
and key personnel of the established rules, standards, bubbler pond to the reactor are also activated. That is,
and instructions concerning nuclear and technical safety the safety systems are more than adequate if they are
in the design, construction, and operation of facilities in activated at the right time.
the nuclear power industry."
So all of these safety systems should thus have been
The committee was also given the right (to be specific, wired to the MPA button. But unfortunately they had
under Subparagraph g) "to invoke responsible measures, been disabled—since the operators were afraid of a heat
all the way to shutting down operation of facilities in the shock to the reactor, that is, the inflow of cold water into
nuclear power industry, when safety rules and standards the hot reactor. This poor excuse for an idea had
are not observed, when equipment defects are discov- apparently hypnotized both the management of the
ered, when personnel are incompetent, and also in other nuclear power plant (Bryukhanov, Fomin, and Dyatlov)
cases when there is a threat to the operation of these and the superior organizations in Moscow. Thus, the
facilities...." holy of holies in nuclear technology had been violated:
After all, if the maximum design emergency was envis-
I remember that at one of the conferences in 1984 Ye.V. aged by the design, this meant that it could occur at any
Kulov, who had just been appointed chairman of Gos- moment. And in that case who gave anyone the right to
atomenergonadzor, explained his duties in this way to deprive the reactor of all the safety systems prescribed by
nuclear power industry people: "Do not think that I will nuclear safety rules? No one had. They took it upon
be working for you. Figuratively put, I am a policeman. themselves....
My job is to prevent and countermand things you do
wrong." Unfortunately, it was precisely as a "police- But the question that arises is why the irresponsibility of
man" that Ye.V. Kulov did not act in the case of Gosatomenergonadzor, Gidroproyekt, and Soy-
Chernobyl. uzatomenergo did not put Bryukhanov, director of the
What kept him from halting the operations on generating Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, and Chief Engineer
Unit 4 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant? After all, Fomin on the alert? After all, work cannot be done under
the test program did not withstand criticism. And what a program that has not been cleared. What kind of men
had stood in the way of Gidroproyekt and Soyuzatomen- are these, what kind of specialists? I will tell about them
ergo? briefly.
 12 JPRS-UEA-034-89
23 October 1989

I met Viktor Petrovich Bryukhanov in the winter of 1971 Slavyansk GRES spotted Bryukhanov and promoted
when I arrived at the nuclear power plant's construction him to be the manager at Chernobyl.
site in the settlement of Pripyat directly from a Moscow
clinic where I had been undergoing treatment for radia- Chief Engineer Mikhail Petrovich Alekseyev came to
tion sickness. I was still not feeling well, but I could walk Pripyat from the Beloyarsk AES, where he worked as
and decided that I would get back to normal more deputy chief engineer for the third unit, which is under
quickly if I was working. I signed the paper saying that I construction and which at the time counted only on
was leaving the clinic at my own wish, I got on the train, paper. Alekseyev had no experience in nuclear opera-
and by morning I was already in Kiev. From there, I tion, and before the "Beloyarka" he had worked for 20
quickly reached Pripyat in 2 hours by taxi. years at thermal stations. As it soon turned out, he was
dying to go to Moscow, and that is where he went about
I had been treated in that same Moscow Clinic No 6 3 months after I began to work at the plant.... After the
where 15 years later they would bring the fatally irradi- Chernobyl disaster, M.P. Alekseyev, deputy chairman of
ated firemen and operating personnel who were casual- Gosatomenergonadzor, was issued a severe party repri-
ties in the nuclear disaster on Unit 4.... mand to be entered on the record card. His chief in the
Moscow job, Ye.V. Kulov, chairman of Gosatomenergo-
But at that time, in the early seventies, nothing yet stood nadzor, was given a still more severe penalty; he was
on the site of the future nuclear power plant. They were discharged and expelled from the party. The same pen-
digging the foundation pits for the main building. This alty came down on Bryukhanov.
was in a sparse young pine forest with air that is
intoxicating as it is nowhere else. Sandy hillocks grown But that happened 15 years later. And in my view the
up with the low trees, bald spots of clean yellow sand causes of it included personnel policy at the nuclear
against the background of dark green moss. No snow. In power plant. From the very first months (before Cher-
some places, green grass warmed by the sun. Silence and nobyl, I had been shift chief at another nuclear power
a sense of the primordial. plant for many years), in building up the staff of shops
and departments I proposed to Bryukhanov people with
"Worthless land," the taxi driver said, "but ancient. many years of experience at nuclear power plants. As a
Here in Chernobyl, Prince Svyatoslav chose his bride. rule, Bryukhanov did not refuse outright, but he gradu-
The bride was a lively one, they say. This little town is ally brought into these positions people from thermal
more than 1,000 years old. And it has remained standing stations. In his opinion, experienced station operators
after all, it has not died...." should work at a nuclear power plant who had a good
knowledge of powerful turbine systems, of power distri-
In the settlement of Pripyat, the winter day was sunny bution equipment, and power delivery lines. By great
and warm. It was often that way there—like winter, but effort, enlisting support of Glavatomenergo over
it always smelled of spring. The taxi driver stopped Bryukhanov's head, I managed at that time to staff the
alongside the long barracks where the plant management reactor and special chemical shops with the necessary
and construction administration were located. specialists. Bryukhanov staffed the turbine and electrical
departments. At the end of 1972, N.M. Fomin and T.G.
I went into the barracks. The floor gave way and creaked Plokhiy came to the Chernobyl plant. Bryukhanov had
under my feet. I found the director's office—a tiny little recommended the former for the position of chief of the
room 6 m2 in area. Bryukhanov stood up to greet me, a electrical shop, and the latter for the position of deputy
man who was short in stature, with dark very curly hair, chief of the turbine shop. Both of these men were
a face burned and wrinkled, and he smiled shyly as he Bryukhanov's own candidates. Fomin, an electrical engi-
shook my hand. Later, the first impression of the gentle- neer by experience and education, had been promoted to
ness of his character, of his obligingness, was confirmed, the Chernobyl plant from the Zaporozhye GRES (a
but something else in him was also revealed, specifically thermal station), and before that he worked in the
a desire, out of a lack of knowledge of people, to Poltava power system. I mention these two names
surround himself with people who had a great deal of life because in 15 years the largest accidents at Balakovo and
experience, but sometimes were not always neat and tidy Chernobyl would be associated with them.
workers. After all, Bryukhanov was quite young at that
time—36 years old. By profession and work experience As deputy chief engineer for operations, I had a talk with
he was a turbine specialist. He had graduated from the Fomin: A nuclear power plant is a radioactive and
Power Engineering Institute with distinction, he rose up extremely complicated enterprise, did he fully under-
the ladder at the Slavyansk GRES (a coal-fired plant), stand that when he left the electrical shop at the Zapor-
where he gave a good account of himself starting up a ozhye GRES? Fomin has an irresistible smile that shows
unit. He would not come home for days, he worked his white teeth. He seems to be aware of that, and he
efficiently, and he knew what he was doing. And in smiles both when and when it is not called for. The
general I later learned in working side by side with him answer he gave me at that time was that a nuclear power
for several years: he is a good engineer, keen-witted, and plant is a prestigious and ultramodern affair. In
industrious. But the trouble is that he is not a nuclear moments of agitation, his rather pleasant and energetic
power engineer. Nevertheless, a deputy minister from baritone alternated with alto tones. He was chunky and
the Ukrainian Minenergo who was responsible for the angular, and his dark eyes had a narcotic glint. He was
 13
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precise in his work, expeditious, exacting, and impulsive. poorly, progress was held up because project documen-
Ambitious and unforgiving. One felt that inside he was tation and technological equipment were not in hand. I
saw Fomin at a conference which we called specifically
always compressed in a coil ready to spring. I am telling
concerning Unit 5. He had failed greatly. In his entire
about him in such detail because he was to become a
kind of nuclear Herostratus and historical figure of a appearance, there was some kind of constraint, the
imprint of the suffering he had gone through. I shared
certain kind whose name would be associated with the
my fears with Bryukhanov, he reassured me: "Nothing
most horrible nuclear disasters at a nuclear power plant
terrible, on the job he will soon get back to normal...."
beginning on 26 April 1986.
We talked, Bryukhanov complained that there were
Taras Grigoryevich Plokhiy, by contrast, was listless,
thorough, a typical phlegmatic, but meticulous, persis- many leaks at the Chernobyl plant, the fittings were not
holding, the drains and air vents were leaking. The total
tent, hard-working. One might say of him on the basis of
first impressions: a vague and listless fellow, if it were leakage was almost constantly about 50 m3 of radioac-
tive water per hour. They were barely able to handle it
not for his methodicalness and persistence in his work.
with the evaporators. There was a great deal of radioac-
What is more, his closeness to Bryukhanov concealed
tive sludge. He said that he was feeling extremely tired
many things (they had worked together at the Slavyansk
GRES), and in the reflection of that friendship he and wanted to move to another job somewhere....
appeared more substantial and vigorous. He had recently returned from the 27th CPSU Congress
Bryukhanov vigorously promoted Plokhiy and Fomin to in Moscow, where he was a delegate.
the top management of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power So, what happened in the fourth power-generating unit
Plant. Plokhiy was the front-runner—he became deputy at the Chernobyl AES on the eve of the disaster?
chief engineer for operations and then chief engineer. On
Bryukhanov's recommendation, he was promoted to At 0100 hours on the night of 25 April 1986, operating
chief engineer at the Balakovo AES, which was under personnel started to reduce the power of the No 4
construction, a plant with a water-cooled and water- reactor, which was operating within nominal parame-
moderated reactor whose design he did not know, and as ters.
a consequence in June 1985 an accident occurred during
startup and adjustment operations because of the negli- At 1305 hours on that same day, the No 7 turbogenerator
gence of operating personnel and a flagrant violation of was taken offline. The supply of power to meet the needs
operating rules; 14 people died, boiled alive. of the unit itself (the four main circulating pumps, the
two electric feedwater pumps, etc.) was switched to the
They pulled the bodies out of the spaces that ringed the buses of the No 8 turbogenerator, which remained in
reactor shaft into the emergency lock and piled them up operation.
at the feet of the incompetent chief engineer, who was
At 1400 hours, in accordance with the program of the
pale as death. experiment, the emergency reactor cooling system
Meanwhile, at the Chernobyl plant Fomin had been (SAOR) was turned off—one of Fomin's most flagrant
moving with seven-league strides from the position of and fatal mistakes. We need to emphasize once again
deputy chief engineer for installation and operation and that this had been done deliberately in order to eliminate
replaced Plokhiy in the post of chief engineer. We should the possibility of a heat shock when cold water reached
note at this point that USSR Minenergo did not support the hot reactor from the tanks of the emergency cooling
the recommendation of Fomin. V.K. Bronnikov, an system.
experienced reactor specialist, had been proposed for
that position. But Kiev did not consent to Bronnikov, After all, those 350 m3 of emergency water from the
referring to him as an ordinary technician (tekhnar). SAOR tanks, when the prompt-neutron excursion began,
Fomin, they said, was a fierce and exacting manager, we when the main circulating pumps failed, and the reactor
want him. And Moscow gave in. Fomin was cleared in was left without cooling, could possibly have saved the
the department of the CPSU Central Committee, and situation and extinguished the steam effect of reactivity,
the matter was decided. The price of this concession is which was the most important one of all.
well-known. It is difficult at this point to figure what reasons Fomin
That would have been a good place to stop and look had in those fatal hours, but only a man who absolutely
around and reflect on the Balakovo experience, to did not understand the processes of neutron physics in
tighten responsibility and caution, but.... the nuclear reactor or who at the least was extremely
presumptuous could have turned off the emergency
At the end of 1985, Fomin was in a car accident and reactor cooling system, which in the critical seconds
broke his spine. He was paralyzed for a long time and his could have sharply reduced the steam content in the core
hopes were dashed. But the powerful organism overcame and perhaps have prevented the explosion.
the illness, and Fomin went to work on 25 March 1986,
a month before the Chernobyl explosion. I was in Pripyat So, it was done, and done, as we already know, deliber-
at exactly that time inspecting the fifth power-generating ately. A.S. Dyatlov, deputy chief engineer for operations,
unit, which was under construction; things were going and the entire staff for management of the fourth power
14 JPRS-UEA-034-89
23 October 1989

engineering unit also appear to have succumbed to the dispatcher. Operation of Unit 4 continued at that time
hypnosis of excessive self-confidence, as they acted con- with the SAOR disconnected—a most flagrant violation
trary to the laws of nuclear physics. Otherwise, at least of operating rules, although the formal excuse was the
one person would have come to his senses at the moment existence of the MPA button.
when the SAOR was turned off and said: "Stop! What
are you doing, guys?!" But no one did come to his senses, At 2310 hours (Tregub was chief of the shift at Unit 4 at
no one did cry out. The SAOR was calmly disabled, the that time), reduction of power was resumed.
gate valve on the water supply line to the reactor had
been closed and padlocked so that in case of necessity At 2400 hours, Tregub turned the shift over to Aleksandr
they could not even be opened by hand. So that they Akimov, and the senior engineer for management of the
could not be foolishly opened and 350 m3 of cold water reactor (SIUR for short) turned the shift over to Leonid
dumped on the red-hot reactor. Toptunov.

Yet in case of the maximum emergency envisaged by the A question arises at this point: What if the experiment
design, cold water would nevertheless go to the core! had been conducted earlier, on Tregub's shift, would the
Here, the lesser of two evils should have been chosen: reactor's explosion have occurred? I think not. The
better to feed cold water to the hot reactor than to leave reactor was in a stable, controllable state. But the exper-
the red-hot core without water. After all, water from the iment could have ended in an explosion even on that
emergency cooling system would arrive precisely when it shift if with the reactor's system for local automatic
needed to arrive, and the heat shock is in this case not control (LAR for short) turned off Tregub's SIUR had
commensurable to an explosion. committed the same mistake as Toptunov, and once he
had committed, it tried to climb out of the "iodine
The psychological question is very complicated. But, of pit."...
course, the conformism of the operators, who had
become accustomed to think independently, careless- But events developed as destiny had programmed them.
ness, and slipshod habits had become the norm in the And the apparent reprieve which we received from the
management staff of the nuclear power plant. There was load control dispatcher of Kiyevenergo, once it had
also the lack of respect for the nuclear reactor, which was moved the tests from 1400 hours on 25 April to 0123
perceived by the operators as something like a samovar hours on 26 April, in fact turned out only to be a direct
from Tula, just perhaps a bit more complicated. To road to the explosion.
forget the golden rule of those who work with explosives:
"Just remember! Do something wrong and there is an In accordance with the test program, the spinning of the
explosion!" There was also the electrical engineering generator rotor was to be tested at a reactor capacity of
bent in the thinking; after all, the chief engineer was an 700-1,000 MW. We should emphasize here that this
electrical engineer, and what is more he had just suffered coasting was to occur at the moment when the reactor
a serious accident to his spine. The oversight of the was shut down, since in the maximum accident envis-
medical and public health department of the Chernobyl aged by the design the reactor's emergency safety system
plant, which should be alert in monitoring the health and (AZ) based on five emergency settings falls down and
fitness of nuclear operators and also the plant manage- smothers the device. But another disastrously dangerous
ment and send them home if necessary, is also indisput- road had been chosen—to continue the experiment with
able. the reactor operating. Why this dangerous regime was
chosen remains a riddle. We can only assume that Fomin
And at this point we need to mention once again that the wanted a pure experiment.
emergency cooling had been disconnected deliberately in
order to avoid a heat shock to the reactor when the MPA Here is what happened after that. We need to explain
button was pressed. Dyatlov and the operators were that the control rods can be controlled all at once or in
presumably convinced that the reactor would not let sections, groups. In a number of the reactor's operating
them down. It is right at this point that you begin to states, it is necessary to connect or disconnect the control
understand the operators did not fully comprehend the of local groups. With one of these local systems discon-
physics of the reactor and did not foresee the ultimate nected, as envisaged by the rules for operating a nuclear
development of the situation. I think that the compara- reactor at low power, SIUR Leonid Toptunov was
tively successful operation of the plant over a period of unable to correct the imbalance that occurred in the
10 years also helped to blunt people's edge. And even the control system (in its measuring segment) quickly
serious warning from the other world—the partial melt- enough. As a consequence, the reactor's power fell to a
down of the core of Unit 1 at the Chernobyl Nuclear value below 30 MW thermal. The poisoning of the
Power Plant in September 1982—was not taken as a reactor with fission products had begun. That was the
lesson. Since the authorities were keeping silent, we were beginning of the end....
hearing voices from God. Information at the level of
rumors, without the sobering analysis of bad experience. At this point, it is time to become acquainted with
Anatoliy Stepanovich Dyatlov, deputy chief engineer for
But let us go on. At 1400 hours, the shutting down of the operations of the second stage of the Chernobyl Nuclear
unit was halted at request of the Kiyevenergo load Power Plant.
 15
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23 October 1989

Lean, with a smoothly combed dull-gray head of hair and So, then, was Dyatlov capable of making the only correct
evasive, deep-set, and lusterless eyes, Dyatlov turned up assessment of the situation at the moment of its
at the plant in mid-1973. Before that, he had headed a becoming an accident and of doing so instantaneously? I
physics laboratory at one of the enterprises in the Far do not think so. What is more, the necessary cautious-
East and had worked on small ship propulsion reactors. ness and sense of danger so necessary to a supervisor of
He had never worked at a nuclear power plant. He did nuclear operators were evidently not developed in him to
not know a power plant's heat diagrams or uranium- a sufficient degree. On the other hand, more than enough
graphite reactors. "How are you going to do your work?" disrespect for the operators and the operating rules....
I asked him. "This is something new for you." "I will It is precisely these qualities that were displayed in
learn " he said in a somewhat forced manner, "the valves Dyatlov to their full extent when with the local auto-
are there, the pipelines.... That is simpler than reactor matic control turned off, SIUR Leonid Toptunov was
physics...." He seemed to be forcing the words out with unable to hold the reactor at a power of 1,500 MW and
difficulty, separating them by long pauses. One sensed in
him a man hard to get along with, and in our work that let it slip to 30 MW thermal.
makes a difference. At such a low power, intensive poisoning of the reactor
with fission products (xenon and iodine) begins. It
I told Bryukhanov that Dyatlov could not be hired for becomes very difficult or even impossible to restore the
the position of chief of the reactor shop. It would be parameters. It became clear: the experiment with the
difficult for him to supervise the operators not only coasting rotor was spoiled. All the nuclear operators
because of his character (he clearly did not have experi- understood this at once, including Leonid Toptunov and
ence in human relations), but also because of his pre- Aleksandr Akimov, the unit's shift chief. This was also
vious work experience: his field was regular physics, he understood by Anatoliy Dyatlov, deputy chief engineer
did not know nuclear technology. A day later, the order for operations. Quite a dramatic situation was created.
came down appointing Dyatlov deputy chief of the The usually dilatory Dyatlov ran from one operator's
reactor shop. Bryukhanov had taken my opinion into
control panel to the other. His quiet hoarse voice took on
account, he had appointed Dyatlov to a position lower, an angry metallic timbre: "Dumbbells! You don't know
but the direction—the reactor shop—had remained.
how to do it! Incompetent failures! You are spoiling the
After my departure from Chernobyl, Bryukhanov pro-
moted Dyatlov to chief of the reactor shop, and then he experiment!"
made him deputy chief engineer for operations of the One can understand him. The reactor was being poi-
nuclear power plant's second stage. soned, the power either had to be raised immediately or
I will give descriptions of Dyatlov made by his subordi- wait a'day for the poisoning to be dispelled.... So waiting
is what had to be done. Alas, Dyatlov, Dyatlov.... You
nates who had worked at his side for many years.
did not learn how fast the poisoning proceeds. Stop a
Razim Ilgamovich Davletbayev, deputy chief of the moment in your recklessness.... And perhaps the Cher-
turbine shop of Unit 4: "Dyatlov was a complicated nobyl disaster will bypass humanity....
man, hard to get along with, he did not pester personnel
over trifles, he would build up his criticism (he was But he did not want to stop. He raged around, he rushed
unforgiving), and then he would run down several about the unit control room, and he wasted valuable
actions or errors all at once. Stubborn, tiresome, he did minutes.
not keep his word...." SIUR Leonid Toptunov and unit shift chief Akimov
Viktor Grigoryevich Smagin, shift chief at Unit 4: were deep in thought, and they had something to think
"Dyatlov was a difficult man to get along with, someone about. The drop in power to such low values had
who operated by delayed action. He was accustomed to occurred from the level of 1,500 MW, that is, from 50
tell his subordinates: T do not punish at once. I think percent of capacity. The operating reactivity margin at
over what a subordinate has done for at least a day, and that level was 28 rods (that is, 28 rods were inserted in
when there is no longer any feeling of resentment in my the core). Recovery of the parameters was still possible....
heart, I make a decision....' He had assembled a handful Time passed, the reactor was being poisoned. It was clear
of physicist supervisors from the Far East, where he had to Toptunov that he would hardly be able to get back up
worked as chief of a physics laboratory. Orlov and to the previous power level, and even if he did manage it,
Sitnikov (both killed) also came from there. And many the number of rods inserted in the core would have to be
others were friends and comrades from where he had sharply reduced, and in that case the reactor had to be
worked before. The general tendency at the Chernobyl shut down immediately. So it followed.... Toptunov
plant before the explosion was to thrash the operating made the only correct decision. "I will not take it back
personnel on the shifts, and to spare and give incentives up!" Toptunov said firmly. Akimov supported him.
to the daytime (nonoperating) personnel of the shops. Both expounded their fears to Dyatlov. "What are you
There were usually more emergencies in the turbine hall, yapping about, you oaf?" Dyatlov attacked Toptunov.
fewer in the reactor department. That accounts for the "After a drop from 80-percent capacity, it is allowed
less alert attitude toward the reactor. The feeling was under the rules to go back up in a day, and you dropped
that it was reliable and safe...." from 50 percent! The rules do not prohibit it. If you will
16 JPRS-UEA-034-89
23 October 1989

not take it back up, Tregub will do it...." This was now a There were 24 minutes left before the explosion....
psychological assault: Tregub, the unit's shift chief, who
had turned the shift over to Akimov and had remained We will make an accounting of the most flagrant viola-
to see how the test would go, was standing nearby. To be tions, both those contained in the program and also
sure, we do not know whether he agreed to increase the those committed in the process of preparing and con-
power. But Dyatlov calculated correctly: Leonid Top- ducting the experiment:
tunov was intimidated by the shouting, he went against
his professional instinct. He was, of course, young, only • in trying to escape the "iodine pit," they substantially
26, inexperienced. Alas, Toptunov, Toptunov.... reduced the operating reactivity margin, making the
reactor's emergency safety system ineffective;
But he was already making the estimates: "The operating • they mistakenly shut off the LAR (local automatic
regulation) system, which resulted in an impermis-
reactivity margin is 28 rods.... To offset the poisoning,
another 5-7 rods belonging to the reserve group would sible drop in power;
• they connected to the reactor all eight main circu-
have to be pulled out.... Perhaps I will get by.... If I
lating pumps (GTsN) exceeding the flow rates in the
disobey, they will fire me...." (Toptunov told about this
emergency, which brought the temperature of the heat
in the Pripyat infirmary not long before he was sent off
carrier close to the saturation point;
to Moscow.)
• intending if necessary to repeat the experiment with
cutting off the power, they overrode the protection of
Leonid Toptunov began to increase the power, thereby the reactor with respect to many parameters (the
signing a death warrant for himself and many of his shut-down signal when two turbines were discon-
comrades. The signatures of Dyatlov and Fomin were nected, the level of water and steam pressure in the
also clearly visible beneath that symbolic warrant. The drum separators, and the heat parameters);
signature of Bryukhanov and many other more highly • they also disconnected the system for protection
placed comrades could also be made out.... against the maximum accident envisaged by the
design (in trying to avoid false activation of the SAOR
And still, to be fair, it has to be said that the death while the tests were being conducted);
warrant was to some degree predetermined by the very • finally, they overrode both emergency diesel genera-
design of the RBMK. All that was needed was to bring tors as well as the operating and startup-standby
about a certain set of circumstances in which an explo- transformers, disconnecting the unit from sources of
sion was possible. And that was done.... emergency supply of power and from the power
system. In trying to conduct a "pure experiment,"
But we are getting ahead of ourselves. Even then, there they actually completed the chain of preconditions
was still time to think better of it. But Toptunov con- required for the maximum nuclear disaster.
tinued to increase the reactor's power. Only at 0100
hours on 26 April 1986 did he manage to stabilize it at a Everything we have enumerated took on a still more
level of 200 MW thermal. The poisoning of the reactor ominous coloring against the background of a number of
with fission products had continued, power could not be unfavorable coefficients in the neutron physics of the
raised further because of the small operating reactivity RBMK reactor and the defective design of the control
margin—by that point, it was far below what was called rods in the emergency safety system.
for by the rules. (According to the USSR report to the
IAEA, the reactivity margin was 6-8 rods, according to What we are referring to is that while the height of the
the statement of the dying Toptunov, who looked at the core was 7 meters, the absorbing portion of the rod had
printout from the "Skala" computer 7 minutes before a length of 5 meters, and above it and below it there was
the explosion, it was 18 rods. There is no contradiction a meter of empty length. The lower end of the absorbing
here. The report was written on the basis of material rod, which at full insertion extends below the core, was
delivered from the unit where the accident had occurred, filled with graphite. In a design like this, the part of the
and something could have been lost.) control rods that first enters the reactor core is the lower
graphite tip, then the empty 1-meter segment enters the
For a reactor of the RBMK type, as I have already said, core, and then only after that the absorbing part. In all,
the reactivity margin is 30 rods. The reactor was unman- Unit 4 at the Chernobyl plant has 211 control rods.
ageable because Toptunov, in avoiding the "iodine pit," According to the data in the USSR report to IAEA, 200
had withdrawn several rods from the group of the rods were in the extreme upper position; according to
untouchable reserve. That is, the reactor's capacity for Toptunov's testimony, 193 rods were up. The simulta-
excursion now exceeded the ability of the available neous insertion of such a number of rods into the core
safety systems to shut down the device. And still it was produces in the first instance a positive flash of reac-
decided to continue the tests. The inner drive for success tivity, since the graphite tips are the first to enter the core
was too strong. The hope that the reactor would not let (length 5 meters) and the empty sections 1 meter in
them down and would rescue them one more time. The length. A flash of reactivity is terrible in a stable and
basic motivation in the behavior of personnel was the controllable reactor, but when adverse factors coincide,
desire to complete the tests more quickly: "We will apply this addition can prove fatal, since an uncontrollable
more pressure, and the job is done. Cheer up, lads!" runaway ensues.
 17
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23 October 1989

Were the operators aware of this, or were they in a state facility 130 km from Kiev? Even 15 years ago, there were
of blessed ignorance? I think that they knew it, in any many people who had doubts about that.
case they had a duty to know it, SIUR Leonid Toptunov
in particular. But he was a young specialist, the knowl- At one point, Bryukhanov and I were driving to Kiev in
edge still had not become his flesh and blood.... a "GAZik" on summons from A.N. Makukhin, who was
then UkSSR power minister. Makukhin himself was a
And perhaps the unit's shift chief Aleksandr Akimov did thermal power engineer by education and experience.
not know it, since he had never worked as SIUR. He had, On the way to Kiev, Bryukhanov said: "You won't object
of course, studied the reactor, he had passed the exami- if it takes an hour or 2 and you deliver a lecture to the
nations for his job, but all the fine details of the design of minister and his deputies about nuclear power and the
the control rods could have escaped the operator's design of the nuclear reactor? Try to do it in terms that
awareness, since they were not directly related to a can be understood, since they, like me, do not under-
hazard. After all, it is precisely in that design that the stand everything about nuclear power plants...."
death and horror of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster were
concealed until the time came. Aleksey Naumovich Makukhin, UkSSR power minister,
behaved in a very domineering way. He spoke jerkily. I
I also think that Bryukhanov, Fomin, and Dyatlov had a spoke about the arrangement of the Chernobyl reactor,
rough idea of the rod's design, not to mention the about the way the nuclear power plant had been config-
reactor's designers and developers, but it did not occur to ured, and about the particular features of this type of
them that a future explosion was concealed in the tip nuclear power plant. I recall that Makukhin asked: "In
sections of the control rods, which are the foremost your view, was this a good choice of reactor design or...?
system for protecting a nuclear reactor. The killing was What I have in mind is its being so close to Kiev...." I
done by what should have been the protector, which is replied that in my view a water-cooled and water-
why death was not expected from that direction.... moderated reactor of the Novovoronezh type would
have been more suitable for the Chernobyl nuclear
Yet reactors have to be designed so that they shut power plant than the uranium-graphite design. The two-
themselves down when unforeseen excursions occur. loop plant is cleaner, there is not so much piping, and the
This rule is the holy of holies in designing controlled emissions are less radioactive. In short, it is safer. "Have
nuclear devices. And it has to be said that the water- you read the article by Dollezhal, member of the
cooled and water-moderated reactor of the Novovor- academy, in KOMMUNIST? He does not advise
onezh type meets those requirements. bringing reactors of the RBMK type into the European
part of the country, but his argument is vague...." "Well,
Here, we need yet another brief explanation. A nuclear what can I say...." "Dollezhal is right, they should not be
reactor can be controlled only thanks to the proportion adopted. These reactors have a long operating history in
of delayed neutrons, which is denoted by the Greek letter Siberia, they have proven themselves there, if it can be
ß (beta). According to nuclear safety rules, the rate of put that way, to be on the dirty side. That is a solid
increase of reactor power must not exceed 0.0065 ß over argument...." "But why didn't Dollezhal show persis-
a 60-second interval. If the proportion of delayed neu- tence in defending his position?" Makukhin asked
trons is 0.5 ß, a prompt-neutron excursion begins. Vio- severely. "I do not know, Aleksey Naumovich," I spread
lations of the rules and overriding the reactor's safety my hands, "there were apparently forces more powerful
systems, which we have talked about above, threatened a than academy member Dollezhal." "What are the rated
release of reactivity equal to at least 5 ß, which meant a emissions from the Chernobyl reactor?" the minister
fatal explosive excursion. asked, now showing interested concern. "About 4,000
curies per day." "And the Novovoronezh type?" "About
Did Bryukhanov, Fomin, Dyatlov, Akimov, and Top- 100 curies. An essential difference." "But yet the mem-
tunov understand this entire chain? The first two for bers of the academy.... The Council of Ministers has
certain did not. The other three should theoretically have approved the use of this reactor. Anatoliy Petrovich
known, but as a practical matter I think they did not. Aleksandrov is praising this reactor as the safest and
Right up until his death on 11 May 1986, Akimov kept most economical. You must have exaggerated. No
repeating while he was still able to speak a single thought matter, we will adopt it.... The operators have to work it
that tortured him: "I did everything correctly. I do not out so that our first Ukrainian reactor is cleaner and
understand why it happened that way." safer than the Novovoronezh design!"
All of this is also additional indication that the drills in
dealing with accidents at the plant, the theoretical and In 1982, A.N. Makukhin was transferred to the central
practical training of personnel, had mainly been con- headquarters of USSR Minenergo, where he took the
ducted within the limits of a primitive management position of first deputy minister for operation of power
algorithm. But how could it have reached such a point of plants and power systems. By decision of the party
heedlessness, of negligence? Who and at what point control committee of the CPSU Central Committee,
incorporated into the program of our destiny the possi- because of the results of the Chernobyl disaster, on 14
bility of a nuclear disaster in the Ukrainian Polesie? And August 1986 A.N. Makukhin, USSR first deputy min-
why was the uranium-graphite reactor chosen for a ister for power and electrification, received a severe
18 JPRS-UEA-034-89
23 October 1989

party reprimand "for failing to take the necessary steps configuration and proposed that the explosive-prone
to increase the operating reliability of the Chernobyl component be removed from beneath the reactor.5 But
Nuclear Power Plant." the opinion of the commission of experts was ignored. As
life has demonstrated, an explosion occurred both in the
Yet then, in 1972, it was still possible to change the reactor itself and also in the leaktight box....
design of the Chernobyl reactor to the WER design and
thereby sharply reduce the likelihood of what happened
in April 1986. And the UkSSR power minister would
then have not been the last person to speak. 26 April 1986
One more significant episode. In December 1979, when On the evening of 25 April, upon my return from the
I was already working in Moscow, we made an inspec- official trip to the Crimean Nuclear Power Plant, I
tion trip to the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. looked over my notes, the minutes of the conferences,
Vladimir Mikhaylovich Tsibulko, who at that time was including the summary of a meeting of the Bureau of the
the first secretary of the Kiev Oblast Committee of the Crimean Oblast Party Committee in which I had taken
Ukrainian CP, spoke in the conference of nuclear power part.
plant construction personnel. His burned face with
traces of keloid scars (he had fought the war in tanks and Before the meeting of the obkom bureau, I had talked
had been burned in one) became a deep red, he looked with V.V. Kurashik, head of the obkom's industrial
out in space in front of him and spoke in the voice of a department, and V.l. Pigarev, obkom secretary for
man who was not used to making objections. But industry. It surprised me at the time that both of them
paternal notes, notes of concern and fond farewell, crept were disturbed by the same thing: Was it not hasty to
into his voice: "Look, comrades, what a beautiful city build a nuclear power plant in the Crimea, in the
Pripyat is, it is a pleasure to the eyes! You say: four country's health resort, could it be that there were no
power-generating units. And I will say: not enough! I other places in the Soviet Union? "Yes, there are. There
would build 8 here, 12, and what is more, let all 20 be are many out-of-the-way and sparsely settled or alto-
nuclear power-generating units! And then what? And a gether uninhabited areas where nuclear power plants
city of 100,000 will rise up. Not a city, but a fairy tale.... could be built." "So why?... Who is making the deci-
You have a wonderful crew of nuclear builders and sion?" "The power minister, USSR Gosplan. And the
fitters that has learned to work together. Why open up distribution of capacity over the area of the country is
another construction site, build them here...." planned by Elektrosetproyekt on the basis of the power
requirements in the particular region." "But after all, we
During one of the pauses, I put a word in and said that have electric power transmission lines stretching thou-
excessive accumulation of nuclear cores was very risky, sands of kilometers from Siberia to the country's Euro-
since it reduced the state's nuclear safety not only in case pean part, can it be that...." "Yes, you are right." "Which
of a military conflict and an attack on nuclear power means that they could be built elsewhere than in the
stations, but also should there be the maximum nuclear Crimea?" "Yes, they could." "And they should be...,"
disaster.... My response went unnoticed, indeed Com- Pigarev smiled mirthlessly. "But we will build them," the
rade Tsibulko's recommendation was received with obkom secretary said, now correcting himself in busi-
enthusiasm as an instruction that had to be carried out. nesslike fashion. "We will be talking about that today in
Construction of the third stage of the Chernobyl Nuclear the bureau with full official responsibility (printsipial-
Power Plant began soon after that, and they undertook to nost). The builders and the management have been
design the fourth.... working sluggishly, they are not meeting their targets.
This situation cannot be put up with any longer."
But 26 April 1986 was not far off, and the explosion of Pigarev looked at me questioningly. "Fill me in, how do
the nuclear reactor of Unit 4 in a single stroke lopped 4 matters actually stand at the construction site, so that I
million kw out of the country's unified power system and can speak more convincingly in the obkom bureau."
halted construction of the fifth unit, which was realisti-
cally supposed to go on line in 1986. I analyzed the situation. The secretary spoke convinc-
ingly.
Now, let us suppose that V.M. Tsibulko's dream had
come true. Had that happened, on 26 April 1986 all 12 During the night between 25 and 26 April, all those who
power-generating units would have been driven out of would be responsible for the nuclear disaster at Cher-
the power system for a prolonged period. A city with a nobyl were sleeping calmly. The ministers A.I. Mayorets
population of 100,000 would have been depopulated, and Ye.P. Slavskiy, and A.P. Aleksandrov, president of
and the loss to the state would have run not to 8 billion the USSR Academy of Sciences, and Ye.V. Kulov,
rubles, but at least 20 billion. chairman of Gosatomenergonadzor, as well as V.P.
Bryukhanov, manager of the Chernobyl AES, and its
We should also mention that Unit 4, designed by Gidro- chief engineer N.M. Fomin. Moscow and the entire
proyekt with the explosive-prone leaktight box and bub- nighttime half of the globe were sleeping.
bler pool under the nuclear reactor, evoked at one time
categorical objections from the commission of experts. At that time, at 2400 hours, that is, 1 hour and 25
As chairman of that commission, I objected to that minutes before the explosion, Aleksandr Akimov's shift
 19
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23 October 1989

came on watch in the control room of Unit 4 at the keep electric power supply in reserve in case of a com-
Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. Many of those who plete loss of power. Manually, by degrees, to undertake
reported for the shift would not work through to the to reduce the reactor's power until it is finally shut down,
morning. Two would be killed immediately.... but in no case pressing the AZ—emergency safety—since
that would be equivalent to the explosion....
So, at 0100 hours on 26 April 1986, the power of the But that opportunity was not taken. The reactor's reac-
nuclear reactor of Unit 4 was stabilized at a level of 200 tivity continued to fall slowly.
MW thermal thanks to the rough pressure exerted by
A.S. Dyatlov, deputy chief engineer. The poisoning of At 0122:30 hours (1.5 minutes before the explosion),
the reactor with fission products had continued. It was SIUR Leonid Toptunov saw from a printout of the
impossible to raise the power further, the reactivity program for fast estimation of the reactivity margin that
margin was considerably less than called for by the rules, it represented a value demanding that the reactor be shut
and, as I have already said above, in the words of SIUR down immediately. That is, those same 18 rods instead
Toptunov, it consisted of 18 rods. That count was given of the necessary 28. For a time he hesitated. After all,
by the "Skala" computer 7 minutes before the AZ there were cases when the computer was wrong. Never-
(emergency safety) button was pressed. theless, Toptunov reported the situation to Akimov and
Dyatlov.
The reactor was in an uncontrollable state and was
explosive-prone. This meant that pressing the AZ button It was still not too late to halt the experiment and
at any of the instants that remained before the disaster cautiously bring down the reactor's power manually, so
would have caused an uncontrollable fatal excursion. long as the core was intact. But advantage was not taken
There was nothing that could be brought to bear on the ofthat opportunity, and the tests began. All the operators
reactivity. except Toptunov and Akimov, who were still confused
by the data from the computer, were calm and assured in
There still remained 17 minutes 40 seconds before the their actions. Dyatlov was also calm. He strode about the
explosion. This is a very long time. Almost an eternity. large control room and urged the kids on: "Another 2 or
How much it is possible to go over in one's mind during 3 minutes, and it will all be done. Cheer up, lads!"
those 17 minutes 40 seconds, one's entire life could be
recalled, the entire history of humanity. But unfortu- At 0123:04 hours, the senior turbine management engi-
nately this was only a time for moving toward the neer Igor Kershenbaum, at G.P. Metlenko's command
explosion.... "Oscillograph turned on!" closed the stop-throttle valves
of the eighth turbine, and the spinning of the generator
At 0107 hours, another pump was added to the six main rotor began. The MPA (maximum design breakdown)
circulating pumps that were operating on the calculation button was pressed simultaneously. Thus, both turbo-
that after the experiment was completed four main generating units—the seventh and eighth—were discon-
circulating pumps would remain in the loop for reliable nected. The reactor's emergency safety was overridden
cooling of the core. so that the tests could be repeated if the first attempt was
unsuccessful. That constituted yet another departure
It is important to understand here that the hydraulic from the program, but the whole paradox was that if the
resistance of the core depends directly on the power of actions of the operators were correct in this case, and
the reactor. And since the power of the reactor was low, they had not blocked the safety system, it would have cut
the hydraulic resistance of the core was also low. All in when the second turbine was disconnected, and the
eight pumps were operating, and the total flow of water explosion would have come upon us 1.5 minutes ear-
through the reactor increased to 60,000 m3 an hour while lier....
the normal rate is 45,000, which is a flagrant violation of
the operating rules. In such a pattern of operation, the At that same instant, that is, at 0123:04 hours, the main
pumps could upset the flow, vibration of the piping of circulating pumps began to fill with steam, which
the loop could occur because of cavitation (the boiling up reduced the flow of water through the core. The heat
of the water with strong shock waves). carrier began to boil in the reactor channels. At first, the
process developed slowly. Who knows, perhaps the rise
SIUR L. Toptunov, unit shift chief A. Akimov, and B. of power would have been smooth thereafter, who
Stolyarchuk, senior engineer for management of the unit, knows....
tried manually to maintain the reactor's parameters, but
they were not fully able to do this. In order to avoid the The SIUR Leonid Toptunov first sounded the alarm.
reactor shutting down under those conditions, A. Aki- "The emergency safety needs to be activated, Aleksandr
mov, with the consent of A.S. Dyatlov, ordered that the Fedorovich, we have an excursion," he told Akimov.
Akimov quickly glanced at the computer printout. The
emergency safety signals be overridden.
process was developing slowly. Yes, slowly.... Akimov
The question that arises is this: Is it possible to avoid a hesitated. To be sure, there had also been another
disaster in that situation? Yes, it is. All that is necessary warning: 18 rods instead of 28, but.... The shift chief of
is to categorically give up conducting the experiment, the unit experienced complicated feelings. After all, he
connect the emergency cooling system to the reactor, and had not wanted to go back up after the power dropped to
20 JPRS-UEA-034-89
23 October 1989

30 MW. He did not want.... He had been against it to the be between 2 and 2.5 meters instead of the supposed 7,
point of nausea, to the point of weakness in his legs. To and it is in that position that they will stay buried....
be sure, he had not been able to oppose Dyatlov. He did
not have the character. He had given in grudgingly. But The time was 0123:40 hours....
when he had given in, he became confident. He
increased the power of the reactor from a state that did At the moment when the AZ-5 button (Class 5 emer-
not conform to the rules and the whole time he was gency safety) was pressed, the dials of the synchroindi-
waiting for a sufficiently serious new reason to press the cators were brightly lighted from below in a frightening
emergency safety button. Now, it seemed, that time had flash. Even the most experienced and coolheaded oper-
come. "I am pressing the emergency safety!" Akimov ators feel pangs in their heart during such seconds. In the
shouted and reached for the red button. bowels of the core, the destruction of the reactor had
already begun, but that was still not the explosion.
At 0123:40 hours, the unit shift chief Aleksandr Akimov Twenty seconds remained before the x time....
pressed the emergency safety button, whose signal sent
into the core all the control rods that were up as well as I should mention that in the control room of Unit 4 at
the rods for emergency safety proper. But first to enter that time were Aleksandr Akimov, unit shift chief,
the core were those fatal tip sections of the rods, which Leonid Toptunov, SIUR, Anatoliy Dyatlov, deputy chief
add half a beta growth of reactivity. And they entered the engineer for operations, Boris Stolyarchuk, senior engi-
reactor at precisely the moment when extensive steam neer for management of the unit, Igor Kershenbaum,
formation had begun there. The rise in temperature of senior engineer of the turbine administration, Razim
the core had the same effect. Three factors unfavorable Davletbayev, deputy chief of the turbine shop of Unit 4,
to the core came together. Petr Palamarchuk, chief of the laboratory of the Cher-
That damned 0.5 ß was in fact the last drop that made nobyl startup and adjustment enterprise, Yuriy Tregub,
the cup of the reactor's patience overflow. unit shift chief who had turned the shift over to Akimov,
Sergey Gazin, senior engineer of the turbine administra-
Now, at this point Akimov and Toptunov should have tion from the previous shift, Viktor Proskuryakov and
waited a bit before pressing the button, asked how Aleksandr Kudryavtsev, who were SIUR trainees from
suitable the system for emergency cooling of the reactor other shifts, as well Gennadiy Metlenko, representative
would actually be, when it had been disconnected, of Dontekhenergo, and his two assistants, who were in
chained shut and sealed, at this point their urgent adjoining rooms.
concern should have been the main circulating pumps,
supplying cold water to the intake line, combating the What did Akimov and Toptunov, the operators of the
cavitation, eliminating the steam pockets and thereby nuclear process, feel at the moment when the control
feeding water into the reactor and reducing the forma- rods became stuck along the way and the first terrible
tion of steam, and probably avoiding excessive reac- shocks were heard from the central hall? It is difficult to
tivity. At this point, they should have seen that the diesel say, because both operators died a painful death from
generators and working transformer were turned on so as radiation without leaving any testimony on this point.
to provide electric power for the electric motors of the
crucial consumers, but alas!... That command was not But one can imagine what they felt. I am familiar with
given before the button was pressed. the feeling operators experience in the first moment of
an accident. I have been in their shoes repeatedly when I
The button was pressed, and the reactor's prompt- worked in operation of nuclear power plants. In the first
neutron excursion began.... instant, you go numb, an avalanche comes crushing
The rods started down, but stopped almost immediately. down on your chest, you experience a cold wave of
After that, knocks were heard from the direction of the involuntary fear above all at being caught unawares and
central hall. Leonid Toptunov was waiting in perplexity. at first not knowing what to do when the pointers of the
When Aleksandr Akimov, unit shift chief, saw that the recorders and indicating instruments fly in different
control rods had traveled only between 2 and 2.5 meters directions, and your eyes try to follow them all at once
instead of the assumed 7, he rushed to the control panel when the cause and pattern of the emergency state are
and released the clutch of the servomotors so that the still not clear, when at the same time (again involun-
rods would fall into the core by force of their own weight. tarily) you are thinking somewhere deep down, at the
But that did not happen. Apparently, the reactor's chan- third level, about responsibility and the consequences of
nels had become distorted, and the rods jammed.... what has happened. But in the very next instant there
comes an unusual clarity of mind and coolheadedness.
Then the reactor was destroyed. A sizable portion of the As a consequence, your actions to localize the accident
fuel, the reactor graphite, and other structures inside the are rapid and precise....
reactor were thrown outside by the explosion. But on the
synchroindicators of the position of the control rods on Toptunov, Dyatlov, Akimov, and Stolyarchuk were in
the Unit 4 control panel, just as on the famous clock in confusion. Kershenbaum, Metlenko, and Davletbayev
Hiroshima, the arrows will forever be frozen in an understood nothing about nuclear physics, but the alarm
intermediate position, showing the depth of insertion to of the operators passed over to them as well.
 21
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23 October 1989

The control rods stopped partway, they did not go down behavior of the pumps. The pumps were vibrating
even after Akimov, unit shift chief, disconnected the severely, and Khodemchuk set out to report this to
couplings of the servos. Violent crashing sounds could be Akimov', but at that point came the roar of the explosion.
heard from the central hall, the floor was trembling, but Vladimir Shashenok, an adjuster from the Chernobyl
this still was not the explosion.... startup and adjustment enterprise, was on duty with the
The time was 0123:40 hours.... We will leave the unit instruments in a room on the +24 level located under the
control room of Unit 4 of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power reactor's feedwater unit. He was taking readings from
Plant for those 20 seconds that remained before the instruments during the coasting of the rotor and main-
tained telephone communication with the control room
explosion.... and the "Skala" computer complex.
At that very moment, Valeriy Ivanovich Perevozchenko,
chief of the reactor shop shift on Akimov's watch, What happened in the reactor? To understand that, we
entered the central hall of Unit 4 at the +50 level (an need to go back a bit and follow the chain of operator
open platform near the area where the fresh fuel is actions.
weighed out). He looked at the refueling machine which At 0123 hours, the parameters of the reactor were the
was motionless against the opposite wall, at the door of closest to stable. Before that, Boris Stolyarchuk, senior
the small room where the central hall operators Kurguz engineer of the unit management, sharply reduced the
and Genrikh were, at the floor of the central hall, he flow of feedwater from the drum separators, which
looked at the fuel holding tanks crammed full with the naturally resulted in a rise of water temperature where it
spent fuel that had been dumped, at the reactor snout... entered the reactor.
The snout is what they call a circle that is 15 meters in After the stop-throttle valve had been closed, the No 8
diameter and consists of 2,000 blocks. Taken together, turbogenerator disconnected, the spinning of the rotor
these blocks constitute the upper biological shield of the began. Because of the reduced steam consumption from
reactor. Each of these blocks weighing 350 kg is perched the drum separators, its pressure began to rise slightly, at
like a hat on the head of a production channel containing a rate of 0.5 atmosphere per second. Total flow through
a fuel assembly. Around the snout was the corrosion- the reactor began to drop because all eight main circu-
resistant floor made up of the ducts for biological pro- lating pumps were operating off the spinning turbogen-
tection, and under them the spaces carrying the steam erator. It was their vibration that was observed by
lines from the reactor to the drum separators. Valeriy Khodemchuk (there was not enough electricity,
And suddenly Perevozchenko shuddered. Strong and the power of the pumps decreased in proportion to the
frequent shock waves began, and the 350-kilo blocks— drop in generator revolutions, and the flow of water into
they had another name in the design, "assembly 11"— the reactor also fell correspondingly). The drop in steam
began to jump up and down on the heads of the channels pressure on the one hand and the drop in water flow
as though 1,700 men had begun to toss up their hats. The through the reactor and also the drop in the supply of
entire surface of the snout had come to life, and it was feedwater to the drum separators on the other were
rocking in a wild dance. The boxes for biological competing factors determining the steam content in the
shielding around the reactor were shuddering and caving core and consequently the reactor's power.
in. This meant that bursts of the explosive mixture had I should mention that the steam coefficient of reactivity
already occurred beneath them.... (between 2 and 4 ß) is the most important in uranium-
Barking his hands and striking painfully against the graphite reactors. The effectiveness of emergency safety
angles of the handrail, Perevozchenko hurtled down the was substantially reduced. The total positive reactivity
steep and almost vertical spiral staircase to the +10 level in the core began in turn to increase because of the sharp
and the transverse corridor that connected the rooms reduction in the flow of cooling water through the
containing the main circulating pumps. Actually, he fell reactor. That is, the rise in the temperature on the one
into a pit 40 meters deep just barely slowing himself hand caused increased formation of steam and pn the
other an extremely rapid growth of the temperature and
down in flight.
steam effects. This also served as an impetus for pressing
With his heart booming, in a state of panic, aware that the emergency safety button. But, and we have also
what was happening was horrible and irreparable, on legs spoken about that, an additional 0.5 ß of reactivity was
that were becoming weak from involuntary fear, he fled introduced when the AZ button was pressed. In 3 sec-
leftward, to the exit onto the deaerator gallery; beyond a onds following the pressing of the button, the reactor's
welcome turn 20 meters from the exit was the beginning power exceeded 530 MW, and the period of the excur-
of the 100-meter corridor, and halfway along that was sion fell to far less than 20 seconds.
the entrance to the Unit 4 control room. He hurried
there to report to Akimov about what was happening in As the reactor's power grew, the hydraulic resistance of
the central hall. At the instant when Perevozchenko the core increased sharply, water flow dropped still
leaped into the connecting corridor, Valeriy Khodem- more, steam was generated intensely, heat removal
chuk, a machine operator, was at the far end of the main reached the critical point, the assemblies containing the
circulating pump room. He had been following the nuclear fuel burst, there was a tumultuous boiling up of
 22 JPRS-UEA-034-89
23 October 1989

the heat carrier, which was already receiving particles of At 0122:30 hours, the "Skala" computer system pro-
the damaged fuel, pressure rose sharply in the produc- duced a printout of the actual fields of energy emissions
tion channels, and they began to rupture. With the sharp and of the positions of all the absorbing control rods.
rise of the pressure in the reactor, the check valves of the (We need to note at once that the computer spends
main circulating pumps slammed shut, and the flow of between 7 and 10 minutes doing computations, so that it
water through the core stopped altogether. The forma- probably was showing the state of the system approxi-
tion of steam intensified. The pressure rose at a rate of mately 10 minutes before the explosion.) At the moment
15 atmospheres per second. of the calculation, the neutron field was concave with
respect to the diameter of the core, and vertically on the
Perevozchenko, shift chief in the reactor shop, also average it had two humps with higher energy emission in
observed the moment when large-scale rupture of the the upper part of the core.
process channels began at 0123:40 hours.
Thus, if we are to believe the computer, in the upper
Then, in the last 20 seconds before the explosion, when third of the zone there was formed a zone of high energy
Perevozchenko was hurtling down from 50 meters to the emission that was like a flattened ball with a diameter of
+ 10 level, a tumultuous steam- zirconium reaction and about 7 meters and a height of about 3 meters. It is in
other chemical and exothermic reactions were taking this part of the core (its weight is about 50 tons) that the
place in the core, giving off hydrogen and oxygen, that is, prompt-neutron excursion mainly occurred; that is, it is
an explosive mixture. here that the heat emission became critical, rupture
occurred, melting and then also evaporation of the
At that point, there was a powerful eruption of steam— nuclear fuel. It is this part of the core that was ejected to
the reactor's main safety valves came on automatically. a great height in the atmosphere by the explosion of the
But the eruption lasted a short time, the valves were not hydrogen-oxygen mixture and was carried by the wind in
capable of coping with such pressure and flow, and they a northwest direction, across Belorussia and the Baltic
ruptured. republics beyond the borders of the USSR.
At the same time, the lower water lines and the upper The fact that the radioactive cloud moved at an altitude
steam lines were torn away by the immense pressure. On between 1 and 11 km is indirectly confirmed by airport
the upper side, the reactor was open to the central hall service technician Antonov at the Sheremetovo Airport,
and the spaces used by the drum separators, and below, who said that arriving planes (it is well-known that
it was open to the leaktight box which the designers had present-day jet liners fly at an altitude of about 13 km)
envisaged to localize the maximum nuclear accident. But went through decontamination for a week after the
no one had foreseen that accident the way it actually explosion at Chernobyl....
occurred, and so the leaktight box served in this case
simply as an enormous container in which explosive gas Thus, about 50 tons of nuclear fuel was vaporized and
began to build up. thrown into the atmosphere by the explosion in the form
of finely dispersed particles of uranium dioxide, the
At 0123:58 hours, the concentration of hydrogen in the highly radioactive radionuclides iodine-131, plutonium-
detonating mixture in various spaces of the unit became 239, neptunium-139, cesium-137, and strontium-90, and
explosive, and according to some witnesses there were many other radioactive isotopes with varying half-life
two and according to others three or more explosions in periods. Another 70 tons or so of fuel were ejected from
succession. As a matter of fact, the reactor and the the peripheral areas of the core by the lateral rays of the
building of Unit 4 were destroyed by a series of powerful explosion into a heap with structural debris, onto the
explosions of the mixture of hydrogen and oxygen. roof of the deaerator galleries and turbine hall of Unit 4,
as well as onto the grounds around the station.
The explosions resounded at precisely that moment
when the machine operator Valeriy Khodemchuk was at Part of the fuel was ejected onto equipment and trans-
the far end of the main circulating pump room, and formers of the substation, onto the busbars, the roof of
Perevozchenko, chief of the reactor shop shift, was the central hall of Unit 3, and the power plant's ventila-
running along the corridor of the deaerator galleries tion pipe.
toward the control room....
It should be emphasized that the activity of the ejected
Burning pieces, sparks, and flame erupted over Unit 4. fuel was as high as 15,000-20,000 roentgens per hour,
These were hot chunks of nuclear fuel and graphite; and a powerful radiation field was immediately formed
some fell on the roof of the turbine hall and set it afire, around the unit where the accident occurred, a field
since the roof had an asphalt covering. practically equal to the activity of the ejected fuel (the
activity of a nuclear explosion). Activity decreased in
In order to understand what quantity of radioactive proportion to the square of the distance from the heap.
substances was ejected into the atmosphere and onto the
grounds of the plant by the explosion, we need to present It should be noted at once that the vaporized portion of
a description of the neutron field at 1 minute 28 seconds fuel formed a massive reservoir of highly radioactive
before the explosion. aerosols in the atmosphere that was particularly thick
 23
JPRS-UEA-034-89
23 October 1989

and radiating intensively in the area of the affected unit saturated with vaporized fuel, together with the products
of radiolysis and of the steam-zirconium reaction
and indeed the entire power plant.
(hydrogen plus oxygen), entered the central hall, the
This reservoir, which filled rapidly, grew radially, and, spaces of the drum separators right and left, and the
carried by the variable wind, took the shape of an spaces of the leaktight box beneath the reactor.
immense and sinister radioactive flower.
Once the lower water lines, through which coolant was
Approximately 50 tons of nuclear fuel and about 800 fed to the core, had been torn away, the nuclear reactor
tons of reactor graphite (the entire charge of graphite was altogether without water. Unfortunately, as we real-
amounted to 1,700 tons) remained in the reactor shaft in ized later, the operators did not understand this or did
the shape of a funnel resembling a volcano crater. (In the not wish to believe it, which resulted in an entire chain of
days that followed, the graphite remaining in the reactor wrong moves, overirradiation, and death which could
burned up entirely.) Some of the nuclear dust sifted have been avoided.
down through the rips into the space beneath the reactor,
to the floor; after all, the lower water pipes were torn So_explosions.... As I have already said, they occurred
away by the explosion.... first in the reactor's production channels when the
excessive pressure rise began to rupture them. The lower
In order to estimate the scale of the radioactive material and upper piping of the reactor met the same fate. After
ejected in terms of weight, we should mention that the all, the pressure, as we recall, rose at an almost explosive
atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima weighed 4.5 tons; rate—15 atmospheres per second—and very rapidly
that is, the weight of the radioactive substances formed reached 250- 300 atmospheres. The working parts of the
in the explosion was 4.5 tons. production channels and the piping were rated for a
maximum of 150 atmospheres (optimum pressure in the
The reactor of Unit 4 of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power reactor's channels is 83 atmospheres).
Plant flung into the atmosphere 50 tons of vaporized
fuel, creating an immense atmospheric reservoir of radi- Once it had ruptured the channels and reached the
onuclides with long half-lives (that is, 10 Hiroshima reactor space, which was rated for a pressure of 0.8
bombs without the primary factors of destruction plus 70 atmosphere, the steam inflated it, and the steam explo-
tons of fuel and about 700 tons of radioactive reactor sion of the metal structures occurred first. The pipeline
graphite that came down in the area of the affected that existed for discharge of steam from the reactor space
power-generating unit). was calculated for the rupture of only one or two
production channels, and in this case they all ruptured.
Totaling up the preliminary results, we will say that the
activity in the area of the affected unit was between I will quote a fragment of an entry in a journal kept by
1,000 and 1,500 roentgens per hour. To be sure, there one of the firemen in Moscow's Clinic No 6: "At the time
were places at a distance and behind cover where the of the explosion, I was right by the dispatcher station,
activity was considerably lower. where I was on duty. A powerful discharge of steam was
suddenly heard. We paid no importance to it, since
V.Ye. Shcherbina, deputy chairman of the USSR discharges of steam had occurred repeatedly while I had
Council of Ministers, Yu.A. Izrael, chairman of USSR worked there (he is referring to the operation of the
Goskomgidromet, and his deputy Yu.S. Sedunov stated safety valves in the normal operating process of the
at a press conference on 6 May 1986 in Moscow that nuclear power plant—G.M.). I intended to go off to rest,
radioactivity in the area of the affected unit of the and at that point there was the explosion. I dashed to the
Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant was only 15 milliroent- window, after the explosion there were others that fol-
gens per hour, that is, 0.015 roentgen per hour. I think lowed instantaneously...."
that this kind of inaccuracy is unforgivable, to put it
mildly. So—"a powerful discharge of steam...the explosion...af-
ter the explosion there were others that followed instan-
It is sufficient to say that in the city of Pripyat alone taneously...."
radioactivity in the street during the entire day of 26
April and for several days that followed was between 0.5 How many explosions were there? On the evidence of the
and 1 roentgen per hour everywhere, and prompt fireman, at least three. Or more.
truthful information and organizational measures would
have spared tens of thousands of people from overirra- Where could the explosions have occurred? The sound
diation, but.... from the powerful discharge of steam—that was made by
the reactor's safety valves, but they immediately rup-
But let's go back a bit. tured. Then the steam and water pipelines ruptured.
Possibly even the piping of the circulating loop in the
Important here are the sequence, the quantity, and the leaktight box. Consequently, hydrogen and steam went
sites of the explosions of the oxyhydrogen mixture that first to the spaces containing the steam lines, the first
destroyed the atomic reactor and the building of Unit 4. small puffs of the oxygen-hydrogen mixture occurred
Once the production channels had been ruptured and the which were observed by V. Perevozchenko, reactor shop
steam and water lines torn away from them, steam, shift chief, at 0123:40 hours.
24 JPRS-UEA-034-89
23 October 1989

Hydrogen and steam also reached the spaces of the right One of the firemen climbed to the level of the floor of the
and left drum separators, the central hall, and the central hall (+35.6) and looked into the reactor. Radia-
leaktight box. tion of about 30,000 roentgens per hour plus the pow-
erful neutron radiation was coming from the crater of the
It only takes a 4.2-percent concentration of hydrogen in volcano. But the young firemen, though they guessed,
a space to initiate the explosive reaction of hydrolysis did not have a full conception of the extent of the
resulting in nothing more than ordinary water. radiation danger threatening them. Radiation of about
20,000 roentgens per hour was also coming from the fuel
So, explosions must have been resounding right and left and graphite they walked over for a long time on the roof
in the shafts of the downcomers of the leaktight box, of the turbine hall.
right and left in the spaces of the drum separators, and in
the corridor of the steam header under the reactor itself. But for a time we will leave the firemen, who truly
This series of explosions destroyed the spaces of the conducted themselves like heroes. They extinguished the
drum separators, the drum separators themselves, visible flame and conquered it. But the flame of the
weighing 130 tons apiece, were moved from their fixed neutron and gamma radiation, which you cannot extin-
footings and tore away from the pipelines. Explosions in guish with water, that invisible flame, was burning them,
the shafts of the downcomers destroyed the right and left and it consumed many....
rooms of the main circulating pumps. One of them
became the grave of Valeriy Khodemchuk. There were a few people who saw the explosions and the
The large explosion in the central hall must have fol- beginning of the disaster from outside, but at a close
lowed after that. This explosion carried away the rein- distance. Their accounts are very important.
forced-concrete roof, the 50-ton crane, and the 250-ton
refueling machine along with the overhead crane it was At the moment of the explosion, Daniil Terentyevich
mounted on. Miruzhenko, age 46, was on duty in the administration
Gidroelektromontazh, which was located 300 meters
The explosion in the central hall would have been like a from Unit 4. He ran to the window when he heard the
detonator for the nuclear reactor, which had been first explosions. At that point, the last terrible explosion
uncorked and which contained a great deal of hydrogen. resounded, a powerful roar like the sound when a jet
Possibly the two explosions—in the central hall and in fighter breaks the sound barrier, a brilliant flash of light
the reactor—occurred simultaneously. In any case, the lit up the room. The walls shook, the windows rattled,
most terrible and last explosion of the oxygen-hydrogen and panes flew out in many cases, and the floor trembled
mixture occurred in the core, which had been destroyed underfoot. That was the nuclear reactor exploding. A
by the internal ruptures of the production channel, part column of flame, sparks, and glowing chunks of every-
of which had melted, and part of which had been thing flew into the night sky. Fragments of concrete and
vaporized. metal structures somersaulted in the flame of the explo-
sion.
This was the last explosion; it hurled an immense
amount of radioactivity and incandescent chunks of "Why is it blazing up like that....," the guard thought in
nuclear fuel, part of which fell on the roof of the turbine perplexity, fear and alarm, when he felt his heart
hall and deaerator galleries, setting the roof on fire. pounding in his chest and immediately some kind of
pressure and dryness throughout his body, as though he
Here is a continuation of the fireman's entry from the had become thin in an instant.
journal he kept in Moscow's Clinic No 6: "I saw a black
fireball which soared over the roof of the turbine section Then immediately after the main explosion, the roof of
of Unit 4...." the turbine hall and deaerator galleries started. The
Or another entry: "In the central hall (+35.6 level—the melted asphalt could be seen pouring off the roof. "It's
floor, the central hall itself did not exist—G.M.), it already burning....What the hell....It's already burn-
looked like a glow or luminescence. But there was ing....," the guard whispered to himself, unable to come
nothing there to burn, only the snout of the reactor. We to his senses from the explosions and the convulsions of
decided that that glow came from the reactor...." the floor that he could feel under his feet.

The firemen observed this scene both from the roof of The first fire-fighting teams arrived at the unit from the
the deaerator galleries and from the roof of the special fire station of the industrial area, from the window of
chemical unit (the +71-meter level), where they had whose duty room the firemen saw the scene of the
climbed to assess the situation from above. beginning of the disaster. These were the trucks of
Lieutenant Vladimir Pravik's watch. Miruzhenko rushed
The explosion in the reactor hurtled upward and swung to the telephone and called the construction administra-
in the air the slab of the upper biological shield, which tion of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, but no one
weighed 500 tons. It crashed back down onto the reactor answered. The clock said 0130 hours. The duty officer
in the skewed and slightly inclined position, leaving the was not there or was sleeping. Then the guard called
core partially uncovered both right and left. Yu.N. Vypiraylo, chief of Gidroelektromontazh, but he
 25
JPRS-UEA-034-89
23 October 1989

was not at home either. He was evidently fishing. Mir- Fishermen, they seemed to replace one another practi-
uzhenko waited for the morning, he did not leave his cally all day and all night at the place where the drain
entered the cooling pond; everyone fished when he was
work station. not on duty. The water was always warm after going
At that same time, from the opposite side of the nuclear through the turbines and heat-exchanging equipment,
power plant, closer to the city of Pripyat and the Mos- and there are plenty of bites. Also, it was spring,
cow-Khmelnitskiy branch rail line, at a distance of 400 spawning, and the fishing was just excellent.
meters from Unit 4, Irina Petrovna Tsechelskaya, oper-
ator of a concrete-mixing unit of the structural fabrica- It is about 2 km from the fishing place to Unit 4. The
tions combine of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, radiation background there reached .5 roentgen per
who was working a shift, also heard the explosions—four hour. When thev heard the explosions and saw the fire,
booms, but worked through to morning. After all, her many remained there fishing until morning, while
concrete-mixing unit was supplying concrete to make others, feeling an incomprehensible anxiety, a sudden
fabrications for Unit 5, which was under construction dryness in their throat and burning in their eyes, went
and where on the night from 25 to 26 April about 270 back to Pripyat. People had become accustomed not to
men were working, 1,200 meters as the crow flies from pay attention to noises like the cannonlike booms when
Unit 4. The radiation background there was 1-2 roent- the safety valves operated, which were like explosions,
gens per hour, but here and there the air was already but the fire.... They would put it out. It's nothing much!
densely saturated with short- and long-lived radionu-
clides and graphite ash, whose radioactivity was very At the moment of the explosion, two fishermen were
high and which all these people were breathing. sitting on the bank of the intake channel catching min-
nows, which was 240 meters from Unit 4, exactly oppo-
When the explosions thundered, Tsechelskaya remem- site the turbine hall. Every serious fisherman dreams
bers, she thought involuntarily: breaking the sound bar- about a pike-perch. But there is no point going for a
rier.'.. Explosion of a boiler at the PRK (startup-standby pike-perch without a minnow, it is a waste of time. And
boiler plant).... Or perhaps hydrogen had gone off in the in the springtime they particularly like to get closer to the
receivers? Whatever she knew from her past experience unit, more precisely to the pumping station, they play
came to her mind. But the boiler plant was standing around there, and the water teems with them. One of the
intact, the equipment was undergoing preventive main- fishermen was a man with no particular occupation by
tenance (it was warm outside).... There was no sound of the last name of Pustovoyt. The other was Protasov, an
a passing airplane, as one usually hears after the sonic equipment adjuster on a business trip from Kharkov. He
boom. A heavy freight train rumbled past 100 meters liked it here very much, the intoxicating air, the excellent
closer to the city of Pripyat, and everything fell silent. fishing, he even thought: "Move here to live perma-
Then slapping and cracking sounds became audible and nently! If he could manage it, of course. The oblast in
the scream of the raging flame over the roof of the Unit which the capital was located had a limit on newcomers,
4 turbine hall. This was the keramzit and asphalt of the it was not so easy to arrange." They had a good catch of
roof, ignited by the nuclear debris, that were burning. minnows, and they were in a good mood. A warm starry
"They will put it out!" Tsechelskaya confidently Ukrainian night. It was not like April at all, it was more
decided, and she kept at her work. like July. Unit 4, a snow-white beauty, before one's eyes.
And that incongruous combination of wonderful and
In Tsechelskaya's concrete-mixing unit, the radiation dazzling atomic power and the tender fish splashing in
background was 10-15 roentgens per hour. the pond evoked a sense of pleasant wonder in one's
The radiation situation was least favorable in the north- soul.
west direction from Unit 4, on the side of the Yanov They first heard two muffled explosions within the unit,
Railroad Station, the overpass over the railroad from the as though they were underground. A powerful steam
city of Pripyat to the Chernobyl-Kiev Highway. The explosion followed, perceptibly causing the ground to
radioactive cloud passed there following the explosion of shudder, and only then came the explosion of the reactor
the reactor. The depot of Gidroelektromontazh also lay with a blinding flare and fireworks from the pieces of
on the path of the cloud; it was from its window that the incandescent fuel and graphite. Pieces of reinforced
guard Miruzhenko observed the explosions and the concrete and steel beams flew in all directions, somer-
development of events on the roof of the turbine hall.
The cloud passed over the young pine forest that sepa- saulting in the air.
rated the city from the industrial area, sprinkling it
abundantly with its nuclear ash. By autumn, it would The nuclear light had snatched the figures of the fish-
turn red and always would remain a red forest fatally ermen out of the night, but they had no idea about that.
dangerous to anything alive. The radiation background But something had exploded over there. A drum of
outside, in the area of the Gidroelektromontazh depot, gasoline perhaps.... They both went on catching min-
was about 30 roentgens per hour. nows, not suspecting that they themselves, like minnows,
had fallen into the powerful snare of the nuclear disaster.
Who else could see the explosion of the Unit 4 reactor on They just went on catching minnows, watching the turn
that fatal night of 26 April 1986? of events with curiosity. They were watching as Pravik
26 JPRS-UEA-034-89
23 October 1989

and Kibenok deployed their fire-fighting teams and I looked at the pile of rubble and the destroyed main
fearlessly climbed to the level of 30 meters and rushed at circulating pump room. Fire trucks stood alongside the
the fire. unit. An ambulance passed by on the way to the city with
its light flashing.... (I want to interrupt Petrov's story to
"Look! Did you see? A firefighter has even climbed on say that at the spot where he stopped his car the
top of Unit C! (+71 meters above the ground—G.M.) He radiation background had reached 800-1,500 roentgens
has taken his helmet off! He is giving his all! A hero! See per hour, mainly from the graphite, fuel, and hovering
how hot it is." The fishermen were catching 400 roent- radioactive cloud hurled up by the explosion—G.M.) I
gens apiece, as morning approached they became unre- stood there for a minute, I felt an oppressive feeling of
strainably nauseous, they were both in a very bad way. incomprehensible anxiety, numbness, my eyes took it all
Heat, fire, seemed to be burning inside their chest, in and recorded it forever. And the anxiety went all
irritating their eyelids, they were dizzy, like a fierce through me, and I felt an involuntary fear. A sense of an
hangover. And unremitting exhausting nausea. In the invisible threat nearby. The smell was like after a strong
course of the night, they had burned to a crisp, as though bolt of lightning, a sour smell of smoke, my eyes began to
they had roasted in the sun at Sochi for a month. That is burn, and my throat became dry. I stifled a cough. But
the nuclear sunburn. But they still had no idea about still I lowered the window a bit in order to see better. It
that. was after all a warm spring night. I could see quite well
that the roof of the turbine hall and the roof of the
They noticed, dawn was already breaking, that even the deaerator galleries were burning, I could see the silhou-
boys on the roof were slipping around as though they ettes of the firemen flickering in the puffs of flame and
were dazed, and it was also turning them inside out. And smoke, and the quivering hoses stretched upward from
that seemed to relieve it, just like at a party. They were in the fire engines. One fireman had just climbed onto the
that condition when they reached the medical station roof of Unit C, up to +70 level, was apparently observing
and they also went on from there to the Moscow clinic... the reactor and coordinating the actions of his fellows on
the roof of the turbine room. They were 30 meters below
More and more new fishermen continued to arrive at the him.... Now, a bit later, it was clear to me that he was the
fishing spot even on the morning of 26 April. This first of all humanity to climb up there to that unattain-
indicated many things: people's lightheartedness and able height. Even at Hiroshima the people were not so
ignorance, a long-established habit of emergency situa- close to the nuclear explosion, that bomb had exploded
tions which they had gotten away with for many years, at an altitude of 700 meters. But here, it was close
preventing them from being publicized. But we will quarters, right next to the explosion.... After all, under
come back to the fishermen later, in the morning, when him was the crater of a nuclear volcano and 30,000
the sun has risen into the nuclear heavens.... roentgens per hour.... But I did not know that at the time.
Here is the testimony of another eyewitness—G.N. I started the car and went home, to the fifth residential
Petrov, former chief of the equipment department of the district in the city of Pripyat. My family was asleep when
installation administration Yuzhatomenergomontazh: I entered the house. It was about 0300 hours. They woke
up and said that they had heard explosions, but they did
"On 25 April 1986, I drove in my car from Minsk via not know what it was. An excited neighbor lady soon ran
Mozyr to Pripyat. I had taken my son to Minsk to return in, her husband had already been to the unit. She told us
to his Army unit for service in the GDR. My younger about the accident and suggested that we drink a bottle
son, a university student, was in a construction crew in of vodka to decontaminate the organism. We drank the
the south of Belorussia. By the evening of 26 April, he bottle in good cheer, with jokes, and lay down to
was also attempting to get through to Pripyat, but the sleep...,"
roadblocks were already up, and they did not let him This is a suitable place to mention to the reader that it
through. I approached the city of Pripyat somewhere was stated at many press conferences that immediately
around 0230 hours from the northwest, from the di~ec- before the explosion the reactor had been reliably shut
tion of Shipelicha. I had spotted fire over Unit 4 even down, the rods had been inserted in the core.
when I was near Yanov Station. The ventilation stack
with the red stripes across it was quite clearly illumi- But, as we have already said, the effectiveness of the
nated by the flame. I remember well that the flame was emergency safety was for all practical purposes nullified
higher than the stack. That is, it reached a height of because of the flagrant violations of the operating rules.
about 170 meters above the ground. I did not want to After the AZ button was pressed, the control rods, as has
stop by home, but decided to drive a bit closer to Unit 4 already been stated, entered only about 2.5 meters into
to get a better look. I approached from the direction of the core instead of the assumed 7, and they did not
the construction administration and stopped perhaps smother the reaction, but on the contrary assisted the
100 meters from the tower of the unit where the accident prompt-neutron excursion. Nothing was said at a single
occurred. I saw in the light of the fire, which was not far press conference about this most flagrant mistake of the
away, that the building was half-destroyed, there was no system's designers, which ultimately served as the main
central hall or separator spaces, the drum separators had cause of the nuclear disaster.
been moved from their places and gave off a reddish
gleam. It was a scene to make you sick at the heart. Then So, the core was destroyed.
 27
JPRS-UEA-034-89
23 October 1989

approved program and on instructions from Akimov,

Let us go back to the Unit 4 control room. It is 0123:58.
SIUR Leonid Toptunov and unit shift chief Akimov unit shift chief, and he considered his actions correct.
were standing near the left reactor side of the control When he saw the confusion of Akimov, Toptunov, and
panel. Alongside them were Tregub, unit shift chief from Dyatlov, he became anxious. But he had work to do, he
the previous watch, and two young trainees who just was never particularly disturbed. Along with Metenko,
recently had taken their examinations for SIUR. They he watched the tachometer to follow the rotations of the
had come out at night in order to see how their pal Lenya spinning rotor. Everything seemed to be going normally.
Toptunov would do his job and to learn. Aleksandr Razim Ilgamovich Davletbayev, deputy chief of the unit
Kudryavtsev and Viktor Proskuryakov were also there. for the turbine shop, was right there at the turbine
After the AZ button was pressed, the lamps lighting the control panel as the man in charge....
synchroindicators from below lit up and gave the impres- To the left, at the reactor control panel...it was evident
sion that they had become red hot. Akimov rushed to the on the channel display: no water!
switch to turn off the servodrives, pressed it, but the rods
did not go down and became stuck in that partway "What the devil?!" Akimov thought in both agitation
position forever. and confusion. "But eight main circulating pumps are
"I don't understand anything!" Akimov shouted tensely. operating!" At this point, he looked at the amperemeters
indicating the load. The arrows had slumped to zero.
With an expression of bewilderment on his face, which "They have failed!..." Something collapsed inside him,
had grown pale, Toptunov also pressed one after the but only for an instant. He regained his poise. "We have
other the buttons to call up a flow of water....,The MTK to feed water...."
(display of the reactor channels) was lit—water flow was
at zero, which meant: the reactor had no water, the At that point, there were terrible blows from right and
margin preventing a crisis in heat removal had been left and below and immediately thereafter—the shat-
tering force of the all-encompassing explosion. It seemed
exceeded.... that everything all over and everywhere was collapsing;
The thunder from the central hall indicated that the the shock wave, with milk-white dust and the hot mois-
crisis in heat removal had occurred and the channels ture of radioactive steam, with stifling pressure invaded
were rupturing. the control room of Unit 4, which now was no more. Just
as in an earthquake, the walls and floor buckled, there
"I do not understand anything! What kind of devilry is was a sifting of material from the ceiling. The tinkle of
this?! We did everything correctly...," Akimov cried out the glass of the windows in the corridor of the deaerator
once again. galleries, the lights went out, only three emergency bulbs
set up on a storage battery were still burning, the
Anatoliv Dyatlov, tall and pale, with his gray head of crackling and lightning bursts of short circuits—the
hair combed back smoothly, who was deputy chief explosion ripped out all of the electrical wiring, the
engineer, came over to the left side of the control panel, power cables, and the monitoring cables....
which was for the reactor. Stereotypical bewilderment on
his face: "We did everything right.... It cannot be.... We Dyatlov issued a command in a heartrending voice that
did everything...." carried over the rumbling and the noise: "Cooling with
Boris Stolyarchuk, senior engineer of the unit manage- emergency speed!" But this was not so much a command
as a terror-stricken scream.... The hissing of steam, the
ment, was at control panel P, in the central part of the eagle scream of hot water pouring in from somewhere.
control room, where the feedwater and deaerator unit The mouth, the nose, the eyes, and ears were crammed
were controlled. He made reconnections on the deaera-
with floury dust, dryness in the mouth, and utter atrophy
tor-feedwater lines of the plant, regulated the flow of of consciousness and will. The unexpected bolt of light-
feedwater into the drum separators. He was also dis-
ning had taken away all the senses—pain, fear, the sense
traught and also convinced that his actions had been
entirely correct. Sharp blows to the nerves were coming of heavy guilt, and irreparable grief. But it would all
from the bowels of the unit's building, a desire welled up come, although not immediately. And fearlessness and
to do something to prevent that threatening rumble, but the courage of despair were the first to return to these
he did not know what to do, since he did not understand people. But it would be a long time yet, almost to the
very point of death, before the saving and lulling lies, the
the nature of what was happening. myths, and the legends engendered by a dim-witted, even
At panel T, where the turbogenerating units were con- half-crazed mind would be conquered in some of them.
trolled (the right side of the control panel), were Igor
Kershenbaum, senior engineer of the turbine manage- "This is it!..." the thought flashed through Dyatlov in a
ment, and Sergey Gazin, who had turned the shift over to panic. "The explosive mixture has been detonated....
him and stayed to see how everything would go. It was Where?... Seemingly in the emergency tank of the SUZ
Igor Kershenbaum who had performed all the operations (safety control system—G.M.)." This version, engen-
to shut off turbogenerating unit No 8 and to put the dered in the shocked brain of Anatoliy Dyatlov, was to
turbogenerator in the condition of the spinning gener- wander for a long time yet in people's minds, was to
ator rotor. He had done his job in accordance with the console the hemorrhaging consciousness, the paralyzed
28 JPRS-UEA-034-89
23 October 1989

and sometimes convulsively quivering will, came all the turbine hall!" he shouted shrilly, adding something
way to Moscow, and it was believed right up until 29 incomprehensible and then leaped back toward the fire
April; it was the basis for many actions that were and the raging radiation.
sometimes fatal to people's lives. But why? Well, because
that was the easiest approach. It contained both a Razim Davletbayev and Petr Palamarchuk, supervisor
justification and a salvation for those who were respon- of the group from the Chernobyl startup and adjustment
sible from the bottom to the top. Especially those who by enterprise, rushed after him to the turbine hall. He had
some miracle had been left intact in the radioactive belly come out at night to record the vibration characteristics
of the explosion. They needed strength, and a conscience of generator 8 together with his coworkers from the
that was at least partly quieted gave it to them. After all, Kharkov Turbine Plant. Akimov and Dyatlov sped to
ahead of them was the entire night, the unendurable the open door. What they saw was horrible, something
night of death which they had nevertheless conquered.... inconceivable. There was burning at several places at
levels 12 and 0, glowing blocks of graphite and hunks of
"What is happening?! What is this?!" Aleksandr Akimov fuel were scattered over the yellow plasticized rubber,
shouted when the dusty fog had dispersed just a bit, the and there was a new smoking flame burning around
rumbling had quieted down, and the hissing of the them. Fragments of the roof were heaped up on turbine
radioactive steam and noise of the pouring water 7. A blue-gray smoke was rising up from the heat. Fumes,
remained the main sounds of the nuclear giant that was black ash coming down in puffballs, hot oil gushing from
expiring, and those sounds were not loud. a broken pipe, the break in the roof, and a panel of the
roof slab swinging over the chasm of the turbine hall and
Aleksandr Akimov, a strapping and strong 35-year-old just about ready to come crashing down. A powerful
lad with a broad rosy-cheeked face, wearing glasses, with stream of boiling water from a broken fitting was striking
a dark wavy head of hair, powdered now with radioac- the wall of the condensate box. A thick black column of
tive dust, rushed around without knowing what to do: radioactive graphite dust was sifting down from the
"Sabotage?! It can't be! We did everything right...." break in the roof, spreading further at level 12 and
SIUR Leonid Toptunov—young, plump, flushed, with a coming down, and descending to cover people and
little mustache, out of the institute just 3 years—was equipment....
confused, pale, he had the impression that there would
be another blow, but he did not know which side it Akimov rushed to the telephone: "Zero two! Quickly!...
should come from. Yes, yes! Fire in the turbine hall!... The roof, too!... Yes,
yes!... Already left?! You're great!... Quickly!..."
Perevozchenko ran into the control room out of breath.
Lieutenant Pravik's team was already swinging their
Breathing fitfully, pale, all covered with dust and abra- trucks around near the walls of the turbine hall, they had
sions, he cried to Akimov, "Aleksandr Fedorovich! Out already begun....
there...." He waved his hand upward, in the direction of
the central hall. "Something terrible there.... The reactor Dyatlov ran out of the unit control room and with
snout is collapsing.... The blocks of assembly 11 are resounding steps, as though he were wearing football
jumping around as though they were alive.... And these- shoes, sliding on the broken glass that made a soul-
...explosions.... Have you heard them? What is that?" wrenching gritting and grinding sound, he ran into the
At that instant, a silence muffled in cotton prevailed in backup control room, which was right next to the stair-
the unit, broken only by the unfamiliar, soul-piercing, case-elevator well. He pressed the AZ-5 button and
unknown hissing of steam and the sound of running turned the key to shut off power to the servodrives. Late.
Why? The reactor had been destroyed.... But Anatoliy
water. There was a ringing in the ears from that silence
which had ensued after the volcanic and deafening Stepanovich Dyatlov figured otherwise: The reactor was
crashes of the calamity. There was an acrid smell in the intact, the safety control system tank had ruptured in the
air. Like the odor of ozone, only very sharp. A tickle in central hall. The reactor was intact.... The reactor was
the throat.... intact....

Boris Stolyarchuk, senior engineer of the unit manage- The windows in the backup control room were broken,
ment, pale, looked at Akimov and Dyatlov with a kind of the glass made a slippery screaching sound under the
searching and helpless expression. feet, and there was a strong smell of ozone. Dyatlov
looked out the window, stuck his head outside. Night-
"Take it easy!" Akimov said. "We have done everything time. The din and screaming of the fire raging up above.
correctly...." And to Perevozchenko: "Run up, Valer, see In the reddish reflection from the fire, he could see a
what is going on there...." horrible heap of structural fragments, girders, concrete,
and brick. Something was scattered around the unit on
At that instant, the door from the turbine hall was flung the asphalt. Very thickly. Something black.... But he
open. Vyacheslav Brazhnik, senior turbine machine could not take it in that this was graphite from the
operator, rushed in covered with soot. "Fire in the reactor. Just as in the turbine room. There as well his
 29
JPRS-UEA-034-89
23 October 1989

rods were jammed.... But if they were lowered from the

eyes had seen the glowing chunks of graphite and fuel.
But his mind would not accept the horrible implication central hall by hand? An idea....
of what he had seen. "Proskuryakov, Kudryavtsev...." In Akimov's tone of
voice there was an imploring note, although he had every
He went back to the control room. In his soul, there now right to issue orders. Everyone who was in the control
rose up the resilient will to act, responding to the room at the moment of the accident had come under his
emergency, to do something immediate, miraculous, to direct authority. But he implored them: "Lads, you have
save the situation, and then everything would crash into to go quickly to the central hall...to turn the handles...the
an abyss of hopelessness and apathy. Dyatlov went back emergency safety rods have to be lowered by hand.
to the control room and listened to the others. Petr Nothing works from here...."
Palamarchuk was trying in vain to contact Room 604,
where his subordinate Volodya Shashenok was with his Proskuryakov and Kudryavtsev set off. They set off, my
instruments. No contact. By that time, Palamarchuk had dear good lads. Young they were, so young and not to
already managed to run around turbogenerating unit 8, blame for anything. They set off to their death.
had dropped down to level 0, had found the men from
Kharkov in the mobile laboratory installed on a Mer- Valeriy Perevozchenko, it seems, was the first to realize
cedes-Benz truck, and had insisted that they leave the the full horror of what had happened. He had seen the
unit immediately. As a matter of fact, the two of them beginning of the disaster. He had already become con-
had already managed to descend to the heap around the vinced of the irreversibility, of the horrible truth of the
reactor and had received a lethal dose. Akimov managed destruction. In the central hall, he had seen such.... After
to ring up all the chiefs of shops and departments and what he had seen, the reactor could not exist. It simply
call for help. He made an urgent call to the electrical did not exist. And if it did not exist, that meant.... People
people. There was a fire in the turbine hall, hydrogen had had to be rescued. He had to save the lads under him. He
to be removed from generator 8, power supply had to be was responsible for their lives with his own. That is how
restored to crucial consumers.... Valeriy Ivanovich Perevozchenko, chief of the reactor
shop shift, defined his responsibility during those min-
"The main circulating pumps are down!" he shouted utes. And the first thing that he did was to go off to find
through the receiver to Aleksandr Lelechenko, deputy Valera Khodemchuk....
chief of the electrical shop. "I cannot start a single pump!
The reactor is without water! Help out quickly!"
Testimony of Nikolay Feodosyevich Gorbachenko, duty
They could not contact the dosimetrist. The switchboard officer of the dosimetry department on Akimov s snitt:
had been chopped away. Only the outside telephones "At the moment of the explosion and afterward, I was at
were working. They all felt the radiation inside them. But the dosimetry panel. There were several shudders with
how much? What background? They did not know.... terrible force. I thought: everything, the roof. But I saw
There were no instruments in the control room. Nor that I was alive, I was standing on my feet. Another
were there any "rose petal" breathing masks. Nor was comrade, my assistant Pshenichnikov, quite a young lad,
there any potassium iodide. It would not be a bad idea was there with me at the dosimetry panel. I opened the
for them all to take a tablet now. It made no difference.... door to the corridor of the deaerator galleries, clouds of
No contact with the dosimetry panel. white dust and steam were coming from there. There was
the characteristic smell of steam. There were still flashes
"Petr, you go," Akimov begged Palamarchuk, "run to of discharges. Short circuits. The panels of Unit 4 were
Kolya Gorbachenko, find out why he is silent...." immediately extinguished on the dosimetry panel. No
readings. I did not know what was happening in the unit,
"I have to go to Shashenok, I have to go to Shashenok.... what the radiation situation was. The emergency signal
Something is wrong there.... He is also silent...." system was working on the panels of Unit 3 (we had a
single panel for the entire stage of construction). All the
"Get Gorbachenko and you both go to Shashenok." instruments had gone off scale. I pushed the toggle
Akimov switched to something else: "A report had to be switch for the unit control room, but the switchboard
made to Bryukhanov, to Fomin.... Had to.... Oh, how had no power. No communication with Akimov. I
much had to be done.... The reactor without water.... The reported by the outside telephone to Samoylenko, chief
rods of the safety control system had stuck partway.... of the shift in the dosimetry department; he was at the
His mind was confused, it was oppressed...yes, it was control panel of the first stage. He in turn called Kras-
oppressed by shame.... A wave now burning hot, now icy, nozhon and Kaplun, the senior man in the radiation
seered his heart as soon as his feverish mind tried to get safety department. I tried to determine the radiation
the full truth of what had happened through to him. Ah, situation in the room where I was and in the corridor
that hellish shock...the shock of becoming aware of the outside the door. I had only the DRGZ radiometer rated
greatest responsibility. The full weight of it came down for 1,000 microroentgens per second. It went off scale. I
on him like a mountain. Something had to be done. They had another instrument with a scale that went up to
were all waiting on him.... Proskuryakov and Kudryavt- 1,000 roentgens, but when I turned it on, as luck would
sev, the SIUR trainees, were idly conversing nearby. The have it, it burned out. There were no others. Then, I went
 30 JPRS-UEA-034-89
23 October 1989

over to the unit control room and reported the situation started there. A great many of them.... "Ah, no safety
to Akimov. Everywhere it was off scale at 1,000 equipment.... There isn't anything...," he thought with
microroentgens per second. Probably about 4 roentgens annoyance, filling his lungs fully with the air containing
per hour. If that was so, then we could work about 5 radionuclides. There was a fire burning his lungs. That
hours. Depending, of course, on the conditions of the first oppressiveness passed, Perevozchenko felt an inner
emergency situation. Akimov said I should go around heat in his chest, in his face, throughout his entire being.
the unit and determine the dosimetric situation. I went As though he had completely burned up from within. It
up to the level +27 through the staircase-elevator well, is burning! It is burning! "What have we done?! Children
but I went no further. The instrument was off scale will die.... In the central hall where the explosion was, the
everywhere. Petya Palamarchuk came, and he and I went operators Kurguz and Genrikh.... In the rooms of the
to Room 604 to look for Volodya Shashenok...." main circulating pumps, Valera Khodemchuk.... In the
room of the control and measurement station under-
And at that time, there were several fires in the turbine neath the reactor's feedwater unit was Volodya Shashe-
hall, at level 0. There was a break in the roof, glowing nok.... Which way should he run, who should he look for
chunks of fuel and graphite had fallen on the floor and on first?"
the equipment, a piece of the concrete roof had broken
an oil line, the oil was burning. It had also broken the First, the radiation situation had to be clarified. Per-
pressure valve on the feed pump, and the boiling radio- evozchenko, sliding on fragments of glass, ran to the
active water was gushing out. The turbine oil tank and room where the radiation safety panel was, to Gor-
hydrogen in the generator might explode at any moment. bachenko.
Action had to be taken.
The dosimetrist was pale, but collected.
But for a time let us leave the turbine hall, where the
operators, not sparing their lives, displayed miracles of "What background, Kolya?" Perevozchenko asked. His
heroism and did not allow the fire to spread to the other face was already burning with a brown fire.
units. That was quite a feat. Equal to what the firemen
did. "Well, you see.... They are off scale on a range of 1,000
microroentgens per second, the panels for Unit 4 have
At that point, the SIUR trainees Proskuryakov and burned out...." Gorbachenko smiled guiltily. "We will
Kudryavtsev, executing Akimov's order, ran out into the assume that it is 5 roentgens per hour. But it seems that
corridor of the deaerator galleries and as usual turned it could be more...."
right, toward the elevator in the VSRO unit, but they saw
that the shaft had been destroyed, the elevator, twisted "You mean you couldn't even get instruments?"
by an unknown force, was hanging from fragments of
structural elements. Then they went back to the staircase "Well, here is an instrument rated for 1,000 roentgens,
and elevator well. There was an acrid smell of ozone— but it burned up. The second one is locked up in the
just like after a thunderstorm, but still stronger. They locker. Krasnozhon has the key. I just looked, that locker
kept on sneezing. And they also felt some force around is in the rubble. You can't get near it. I am going now
them. But they started to climb up.... with Palamarchuk to look for Shashenok. He didn't
respond from Room 604...."
Perevozchenko, after he had warned Akimov and Dyat-
lov, rushed into the corridor of the deaerator galleries Perevozchenko left the dosimetry panel and ran to the
after them, intending to go look for his subordinates, main circulating pump room, where Valera Khodem-
who could have been in the rubble. The very first thing chuk had remained before the explosion. That was the
he did was to run to the broken windows and look out. closest.
There was an extremely strong smell as of freshness, like
the air after a thunderstorm, but many times stronger. It Petya Palamarchuk, chief of the laboratory of the Cher-
was nighttime in the yard outside. Red reflections from nobyl startup and adjustment enterprise, ran from the
the burning roof of the turbine hall in the low nighttime unit control room toward the dosimetry panel. The
sky. When there was no wind, the air usually had no reader will recall that he and his subordinates were
smell. But at this point, Perevozchenko felt as it were the recording the characteristics and parameters of various
pressure of the unseen rays that were running all through systems while the rotor was spinning. It was now clear
him. He was seized by some inner panic fear coming that Shashenok had remained silent in Room 604, which
from the death of his organism. But his anxiety for his was the most dangerous place—in the monolithic reactor
comrades was uppermost. He stuck his head quite far out unit where the calamity had just struck. What had
and looked to the right. He realized that the reactor unit happened to him? This was a key room. The signal lines
was destroyed. Where the walls of the main circulating from the main operating system went down there to the
pump room had been, he saw in the darkness a heap of recorders. If a disk ruptured.... Steam at 300°, super-
broken structural elements, pipe, and equipment. Up heated water. He did not answer the telephone. Uninter-
above...? He raised his head. The spaces of the drum rupted whistling in the receiver. Probably the receiver
separators were not there either. That meant an explo- had been thrown off the hook. Communication with him
sion in the central hall. He could see fires that had had been excellent 5 minutes before the explosion.
 31
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Palamarchuk and Gorbachenko ran to the staircase- Proskuryakov and Kudryavtsev were at the nucleus of an
elevator well. "I am going for Khodemchuk!" Per- atomic explosion. But where was the reactor?
evozchenko shouted to them as they disappeared down-
ward from the corridor of the deaerator galleries into the The round slab of the upper biological shield, with
monolithic part of the destroyed reactor department. fragments of the thin stainless steel pipes (the KTsTK
Fuel and reactor graphite were scattered everywhere system) sticking out in all directions, lay at an angle on
the reactor shaft. The reinforcing steel of the demolished
there. walls was dangling shapelessly on all sides. This meant
Palamarchuk and Gorbachenko ran up the stairs to level that the explosion had hurtled the slab upward and it had
24. At level 10, Perevozchenko ran along the short fallen back down in a slanted position onto the reactor. A
corridor toward the destroyed main circulating pump red and blue fire was coming from the throat of the
demolished reactor with an intense howling. There
room....
clearly was a good draft—a direct flow of air all the way
At that time, the young SIUR trainees Kudryavtsev and through. The faces of the trainees were struck by the
Proskuryakov were getting closer, working through the nuclear heat with radioactivity of 30,000 roentgens per
rubble, to level 36, which is where the reactor hall was. hour. They involuntarily covered their faces with their
Up above, amplified by the echo of the empty elevator hands, as though they were sheltering themselves from
shaft, they could hear the scream of the flames, the the sun. It was quite clear that there were no control rods
shouts of the firemen, which were coming from the roof at all. carried away by the explosion. There was no point
of the turbine hall and from somewhere quite close, now in going down into the core. Simply no reason at
apparently from the reactor snout. all....
"Is it also burning there...?" the lads wondered fleetingly. Proskuryakov and Kudryavtsev, fixing everything firmly
in their minds that they had seen, remained near the
At level 36, everything was destroyed. The trainees went reactor about a minute. This was enough for them to
over the heaps and piles of structural members to the receive a fatal dose of radiation (they both died in
large room of the ventilation center, which was now horrible pain at Clinic No 6 in Moscow).
separated from the reactor hall by the destroyed cast-
in-place wall. It was quite evident that the central hall With a feeling of profound oppression and an inner sense
had been burst by the explosion like a big bubble and the of panic, that replaced the nuclear excitement, they took
upper part had torn away, and the wall was left sagging, the same way back to level 10, entered the unit control
the reinforcing iron protruding in radial tatters. At some room and reported the situation to Akimov and Dyatlov.
places, concrete was sifting down, and the naked network Their faces and hands were reddish brown (nuclear
of reinforcing steel was visible. The lads stood there for sunburn). Their skin was the same color even under their
a short time, shaken, recognizing with difficulty spaces clothing, which was not discovered until they reached
that previously had been so familiar. An unusual joy that the medical station.
was inexplicable in such distress swept through them
even though their chests burned terribly when they "There is no central hall," Proskuryakov said. "Every-
breathed, they had an ache in their temples, their eyelids thing was carried away by the explosion. It is open to the
burned as though hydrochloric acid were being dripped sky. There is a fire from the reactor...."
on them.
"You didn't get it right, guys...," Dyatlov said in a
They went along the corridor to the entrance to the muffled tone, drawing out his words. "There was some-
central hall. The corridor was narrow, obstructed by thing burning on the floor, and you thought it was the
broken structural elements and glass. Overhead the reactor. It seems that an explosion of the oxygen-
nighttime sky in the red reflections of the fire, in the air hydrogen mixture in the emergency tank has carried
there was smoke, cinders, acrid and suffocating, and away the roof. Not surprising: 110 m3 is quite a bit so
above all that the feeling of the presence of some kind of that...it could have carried away not only the roof, but
other force in the air that was pulsating and dense and the entire unit.... The reactor has to be saved. It is
burning. That was the powerful nuclear radiation ion- intact.... Water has to be fed into the core."
izing the air, and it was now perceived as a new and
frightening environment that was unsuitable for life. That is how the legend got started: The reactor is intact,
Without respirators and protective clothing, they went to the tank containing emergency water of the safety con-
the entrance to the central hall and, passing by three trol system exploded, water had to be supplied to the
doors that were flung open, they entered the former reactor.
reactor hall, which was obstructed by twisted rubble and
smoldering fragments. They saw the fire hoses dangling The legend was reported to Bryukhanov and Fomin.
on the reactor side. Water was pouring out of them. But From there, it went on to Moscow. All of this generated
there were no longer any people. The firemen had left a great deal of unnecessary, superfluous, and harmful
there a few minutes before, losing consciousness and effort that compounded the situation at the nuclear
their last strength. power plant and increased the number of deaths.
32 JPRS-UEA-034-89
23 October 1989

After taking a look at the central hall, Genrikh and And they did right not to start out. The medical station
Kurguz had been waiting for Perevozchenko to give the in the first stage was closed. Nor was there a physician's
assignment for the entire shift. Approximately 4 minutes assistant in the medical station of the second stage. That
before the explosion of the reactor, Genrikh said to was how self-confident Comrade Bryukhanov was.
Kurguz that he was tired and was going to take a little Everything was safe. The conception of the recent era in
nap. He went into a small neighboring room, approxi- practice. They called for the "ambulance" to come to the
mately 6 m2 in area, with no windows. There was a cot in ABK [office-shelter building(?)] of the second stage, they
there. He closed the door and lay down. went down to level 0, they broke out a window that had
miraculously not broken and went outside through the
Kurguz sat at the desk and made an entry in the log. window....
Three open doors separated him from the central hall.
When the nuclear reactor exploded, highly radioactive Dyatlov ran to the Unit 3 control room. He ordered
steam and fuel poured into the room where Kurguz was Bagdasarov to shut down the reactor. On returning to the
sitting. In that fiery hell, he rushed to the door. He closed Unit 4 control room, he gave the order to Akimov: "Call
it. He shouted to Genrikh: "There is a big fire! A big the daytime personnel of the shops once again. Everyone
fire!" Genrikh jumped off the cot, rushed to open his to the unit where the accident occurred! Above all, the
door, but on the other side of the door there was a smell electrical people, Lelechenko. The hydrogen has to be
of such an intolerable heat that he no longer wanted to removed from the electrolyzer on generator 8. They are
try, he instinctively lay down on the plasticized rubber the only ones who do that. Get at it! I will take a turn
floor, it was cooler there, and shouted to Kurguz: "Tolya, around the unit...." Dyatlov left the control room.
lie down! It is cooler down low!"
Davletbayev ran several times from the turbine hall to
"At least there it was possible to breathe. It didn't burn the unit control room and reported the situation. It was
the lungs so much," Genrikh recalled later. full of various people. The dosimetrist Samoylenko had
measured Davletbayev with an instrument: "You are off
They waited about 3 minutes. The heat began to recede scale, Razim, in all the ranges! Change clothes at once!"
(the sky had opened up overhead). Then they went into As luck would have it, the set of safety equipment of the
the corridor. Kurguz's skin was burned on his face and turbine hall was locked up. They sent Brazhnik, who had
hands. It was hanging off in loose pieces. His face and an athletic build, to break it open with a crowbar.
hands were bleeding badly.

They did not set off toward the staircase-elevator well, Akimov ordered SIUR Stolyarchuk and the machine
the direction from which the trainees Proskuryakov and operator Busygin to turn on the emergency feedwater
Kudryavtsev would soon be coming, but in the opposite pumps in order to supply water to the reactor.
direction—toward the "clean" staircase, and they went
down to level 10. If they had met the trainees, then they "Aleksandr Fedorovich!" Davletbayev shouted. "The
surely would have turned them back and saved their equipment has no power! We have to get the electricians
lives. But they missed each other. working at once, there is no power at the distribution
boxes.... I do not know what they will do. The cables
Along the way to the unit control room at level 12, were torn away. Everywhere there are lightning flashes
Genrikh and Kurguz were joined by Simekonov and from short circuits. Ultraviolet light at 0 beside the
Simonenko, operators of the gas loop. Together, they feedwater pumps. First, the TVSK lights up (piece of
headed for the Unit 4 control room. Kurguz was in a very fuel—G.M.), then there is an arc from a short circuit...."
bad way. He was bleeding. It was difficult to assist him. "Lelechenko is on the way with his fine lads!"
The skin under his clothing had also blown up into
blisters. Any touch caused the victim intolerable pain. Davletbayev again plunged into the fiery hell of the
From somewhere, he gathered more strength to go under turbine hall. At level 0, Tormozin had driven wooden
his own power.... Genrikh was not so badly burned—he plugs into the holes in the oil line. Just to be smart, he
was saved by the little windowless room. But both had had sat on the oil line and received a contact burn on the
taken 600 roentgens apiece.... They were already going buttocks. Davletbayev rushed to the heap around tur-
along the corridor of the deaerator galleries when bine 7, but he could not get through. There was oil on the
Dyatlov came out of the unit control room. He rushed up plasticized rubber. Very slippery. They turned on the
to them: "Off to the medical station at once!" sprinkler system. The turbine was covered with watery
fog. They shut off the oil pump from the control panel.
It was 450 meters along the corridor of the deaerator
galleries to the medical station, which was in the Unit 1 There was a telephone booth alongside the seventh unit
administrative building. from which the turbine operators kept calling the unit
control room. Opposite the booth, on the other side of
"Can you make it there, Tolya?" they asked the young the window, was the fifth transformer, on which there
Kurguz. "I do not know.... No, for sure.... My whole was a piece of fuel they did not know about. Perchuk,
body aches.... Everything hurts...." Vershinin, Brazhnik, Novik...received a fatal dose there.
 33
JPRS-UEA-034-89
23 October 1989

At that point, Gennadiy Petrovich Metlenko, supervisor supply to the power-generating units still in operation.
of the unsuccessful electrical experiment, was idly con- After all, all of the Chernobyl power plant's power-
versing at that time in the unit control room. Akimov at generating units are along the deaerator galleries, which
carries the main cable lines, which are interconnected. At
length noticed him: "Be a friend, go to the turbine room,
help them to turn the valves. Everything is without 0500 hours, Davletbayev, Busygin, Korneyev, Brazhnik,
power. By hand, it takes at least 4 hours to open or close Tormozin, Vershinin, Novik, and Perchuk had vomited
each one. The diameters are immense...." The small and several times and felt very bad. They were sent off to the
frail man with the lean face and the sharp nose, the medical station. Davletbayev, Tormozin, Busygin, and
representative of Dontekhenergo, ran off to the turbine Korneyev will survive. They absorbed 350 roentgens.
Brazhnik, Perchuk, Vershinin, and Novik received 1,000
hall. or more rads each. They would die a painful death in
Tragedy was taking place there at the level 0. A turbine Moscow....
oil line had been severed by a falling girder. The hot oil
had gushed out and caught fire from pieces of the But let us go back to the beginning of the accident. We
glowing nuclear fuel. The machine operator Vershinin will go with Valeriy Ivanovich Perevozchenko on his
put out the fire and rushed to help his coworkers so as to road to death. He was after all looking for Khodemchuk,
prevent the oil tank from exploding. Brazhnik, Perchuk, he wanted to save all his subordinates. This man did not
and Tormozin were sprinkling other places the fire was know of fear. Courage and duty led him into the fiery
coming from. Highly radioactive fuel and reactor hell. At that time, Palamarchuk and Gorbachenko had
graphite fell through the break in the roof. They were risen by the staircase- elevator well through the rubble to
scattered everywhere. The smell of burning, the radia- Room 604, where the monitoring and measuring instru-
tion, the highly ionized air, the black nuclear dust from ments were and where Volodya Shashenok had become
the burning graphite, and from the asphalt roof that was silent. What had happened to him...? If he was alive....
burning up above. A piece of a girder from the roof had
broken the connection on one of the emergency feed Following a series of terrible explosions in the unit, it
pumps. It had to be disconnected from the deaerators. It was now relatively quiet, only the din and noise of the
took at least 4 hours to turn the valves by hand. Valves flame of the burning roof of the turbine hall, the piercing
also had to be turned by hand to prepare another pump shouts of people putting out the fire, the straining howl
to be aligned with the reactor. The radiation fields at of the destroyed nuclear reactor in which the graphite
level 0 of the turbine hall were between 500 and 15,000 was burning, could be heard through the gaps. All ofthat
roentgens per hour. They sent Metlenko back to the was like a distant background, but up close was the
control room: "Go away! Don't get involved!" babbling brook or downpour of radioactive water run-
ning somewhere, above, below, you could not figure it
Together with the electricians on Akimov's shift, Dav- out, some kind of tired residual hissing of radioactive
letbayev managed to replace the hydrogen in the gener- steam and air.... The air was thickened, unfamiliar. The
ator with nitrogen so as to avert an explosion. They highly ionized gas, the harsh odor of ozone, the burning
poured the oil from the oil tanks of the affected turbine in the throat and lungs, the strained cough, and the sharp
into the emergency tanks outside the power-generating cutting pain in the eyes.
unit. They poured water over the oil tanks.... The turbine
operators performed an outstanding feat on that fatal They ran without respirators, in complete darkness,
night of 26 April 1986. Had they not done what they did, feeling their way along with flashlights, which every
the fire would have burned the entire turbine hall from operator always carried. And Perevozchenko ran over
within, the roof would have crashed down, the fire would the short transverse corridor at level 10 to the main
have spread to the other units, and this would have circulating pump room where Valera Khodemchuk had
resulted in the destruction of all four reactors. It is remained, and he stood still in amazement. The room
difficult to imagine the consequences.... was not there. Above was the sky, reflections of the flame
When Telyatnikov's firemen, once they had extinguished raging over the turbine hall, but directly in front of
him—large fragments, a heap of a mixture of structural
the fire on the roof, turned up in the turbine hall at 0500
hours, everything had already been done there.... A elements, mutilated equipment, and pipelines.
second emergency feedwater pump had been prepared
and aligned with the reactor that no longer existed. In the heap, there was also a very large amount of reactor
Akimov and Dyatlov had assumed that the water would graphite and fuel, which was radiating at least 10,000
go to the reactor, but it could not go there for the simple roentgens per hour. Perevozchenko, who was stupefied,
reason that all the lines in the series had been torn away led the way with the light of his flashlight through all of
by the explosion, and the water from the second APEN that debris. He was straining to listen, trying to catch a
went to the space underneath the reactor, where a great man's weak voice or groan. He had to find Valera and
deal of damaged nuclear fuel was scattered. Mixing with save him. He had to save him. And Genrikh and Kurguz
the fuel, the highly radioactive water went to the lower were also up above.... Up where the explosion had
levels of the deaerator galleries, soaking the between- been.... He would also save them.... He had to.... Those
floors that carried the cables and distribution boxes, were his people, his subordinates.... He would not leave
causing short circuits and threatening loss of power them....
34 JPRS-UEA-034-89
23 October 1989

And time passed. Every second, every minute more was into a gigantic nuclear volcano, that it would not be put
fatal here. The body of the reactor shop shift chief was out with water, since the piping below had been ripped
absorbing more and more roentgens, the nuclear sun- away from the reactor by the explosion, that Akimov,
burn was becoming darker and darker in the darkness of Toptunov, and the boys were in the turbine hall starting
the night. And it was not just his face and hands which up the feedwater pumps in order to supply water to the
were burned, but his entire body under his clothing. It reactor, that they would die in vain. After all, you could
was burning...burning, burning.... It was burning not get water here.... All the people had to be led out of
inside.... the unit. That was the most correct thing to do. People
had to be saved.
"Valera!" Perevozchenko shouted with all his strength.
"Valera! Give a cry; I am here!" He headed straight for Perevozchenko went down, he was continuously vom-
the rubble, he climbed over fragments, searching thor- iting and nauseous and would lose consciousness for
oughly through the cracks in the destroyed structural instants, he would fall down, but he came to himself,
elements, burning his hand on pieces of fuel and graphite again stood up and kept on going on and on.
which he would desperately seize upon in the darkness.
Straining his eari, trying to catch the slightest moan or When he came into the unit control room, he told
rustle, but in vain. As he went on searching, his body Akimov:
rubbing up against protruding hooks of reinforcing steel
and the sharp places where concrete blocks were "The reactor is destroyed, Sasha.... The people have to
chipped, and he squeezed through into Room 304, but be led out of the unit...."
there was no one there.
"The reactor is intact! We are supplying water to it!"
Valera had been on duty at the far side.... That was where Akimov said heatedly. "We did everything correctly....
his station was.... Go to the medical station, Valera, you're in a bad way....
You have become confused, I assure you.... It is not the
And Perevozchenko made his way there over the rubble, reactor, it is the buildings and structures that are
to the far end, and he searched there. But everything was burning. They will put out the fire...."
empty.
"Valera!" Perevozchenko shouted, throwing his hands At the very time when Perevozchenko was looking for
up and shrugging his shoulders. "Dear Valera!" Tears of Khodemchuk buried in the rubble, Petr Palamarchuk
helplessness and grief poured down his swollen cheeks and the 'dosimetrist Nikolay Gorbachenko, climbing
that had been burned to blackness by the radiation. "But over the rubble and debris with difficulty to level 24 of
what is this?! Khodemchuk! Respond!" the reactor unit, finally got through to the monitoring
and measuring instrument room where Vladimir Shash-
But the only response was that the reflections of the fire, enok had been at the moment of the explosion. Palama-
which was raging in the nighttime sky over the roof of the rchuk and Gorbachenko found their comrade in the
turbine hall, illuminated Perevozchenko's face and the debris of Room 604, pinned by a fallen beam, badly
piercing voices of the firemen, which were like the burned by the steam and hot water. Later, it was discov-
desperate cries of wounded birds. There was also a battle ered in the medical station that his spine was broken, his
against death up there, and the people there were ribs were broken, but at that point..he had to be rescued.
receiving death inside themselves.
Just before the explosion, when pressure in the loop was
Becoming weak from the nuclear fatigue that had rising at a rate of 15 atmospheres per second, the pipes
attacked him, Perevozchenko climbed back over the and recorders in that room tore loose and released
rubble, picked his way, swaying, to the stairway-elevator radioactive steam and superheated water, something fell
well and began to climb up to level 36, to the central hall. from above, and Shashenok lost consciousness. The
After all, that is where Kurguz and Genrikh would have entire surface of his skin had received deep thermal and
died in the nuclear hell and fire. radiation burns. The lads freed their comrade from
under the rubble, Palamarchuk, trying not to cause him
He did not know that Anatoliy Kurguz and Oleg Gen- new sufferings, loaded him onto his back with Gor-
rikh, intensely irradiated and scalded by the radioactive bachenko's help and carried him to level 10, making his
steam, had already climbed down by the hypothetically way with difficulty over the heaps of concrete and pipes.
clean staircase to level 10 and had been sent off to the From there, taking turns with Gorbachenko, they went
medical station. along the corridor of the deaerator galleries, approxi-
Perevozchenko retraced the path of the trainees mately 450 meters, to the medical station at the ABK of
Kudryavtsev and Proskuryakov, first went into the little Unit 1. The medical station proved to be nailed shut.
operators' room, they were not there, then he went to the They called for emergency medical aid. In 10 minutes,
central hall and received an additional attack of radia- the physician's assistant Sasha Skachok came, and they
tion from the reactor in which the fire was droning. took Shashenok off to the medical unit. Then the pedi-
atrician Belokon came in his ambulance and stayed on
Perevozchenko, who was an experienced physicist, knew duty here until morning, until he also had to be carried
that the reactor was no longer there, that it had turned off to the medical unit.
 35
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23 October 1989

Palamarchuk and Gorbachenko had also become Solovyev reported the situation to Bryukhanov.
intensely irradiated as they were carrying their comrade, "Your instrument is broken," Bryukhanov said. "There
and they were soon sent to the medical unit. Gor- can be no such fields. Do you understand what it's all
bachenko had before that managed to go around the unit about? You figure out your instrument or throw it on the
as well, measuring the gamma background, he had been
in the turbine hall, and he had gone around the unit dust heap...."
where gear was kept. But actually it was all in vain. With "The instrument is correct," Solovyev said.
an instrument whose scale went only to 3.6 roentgens, he
could not measure the raging radiation fields, and there- At 0430 hours, Chief Engineer Fomin arrived at the unit
fore he could not properly warn his comrades. control room. People had been looking for him for a long
time. For some reason, he had not picked up the tele-
At 0230 hours, Bryukhanov, the plant's manager, arrived phone at home, his wife muttered something indistinct.
in the Unit 4 control room. His appearance was powder- Someone said that he had been fishing, and that was why
gray, he was confused, almost beside himself. "What he had not come to the telephone. People knew some-
happened?" he asked Akimov in a constrained voice.
thing....
In the Unit 4 control room, the radioactivity of the air at
that time was about 3-5 roentgens per hour, but in some "Report the situation!"
places it came from the ruins and was therefore higher. Akimov made his report. He enumerated in detail the
Akimov reported that there had been a serious radiation sequence of the procedures performed before the explo-
accident, but the reactor, in his opinion, was intact, that sion.
the fire in the turbine room was in the stage of being "We did everything correctly, Nikolay Maksimovich. I
extinguished, Major Telyatnikov's firemen were putting have no complaints against the personnel on the shift. At
out the fire on the roof, that the second emergency the moment when the AZ-5 button was pressed, the
feedwater pump was being readied for operation and reactivity margin was 18 rods of the safety system. The
would soon be connected. Lelechenko and his people devastation was caused by an explosion of the 110-m
merely had to supply the power. The transformer had tank for the emergency water of the emergency system in
been disconnected from the unit for protection against
the central hall, at the +71-meter level...."
short circuits.
"The reactor is intact?" Fomin asked in a beautiful
"You say there has been a serious radiation accident, but
if the reactor is intact.... What is the activity now in the mellow bass voice.
unit?" "The reactor is intact!" Akimov firmly replied.
"Gorbachenko's radiometer shows 1,000 microroent- "Supply water to the reactor continuously!"
gens per second...."
"An emergency feedwater pump is now in operation
"Well, that is not much," Bryukhanov said, feeling a bit
from the deaerators to the reactor."
easier.
Fomin moved away. Within himself, he would first rush
"That is what I think, too," Akimov confirmed excit- about like a poisoned animal, then he would collapse
edly. into a bottomless chasm, mentally issuing a panicky cry:
"Can I report to Moscow that the reactor is intact?" "The end! The end!"—then he would suddenly assume
iron confidence: "We will see it through!"
"Yes, you can," Akimov responded confidently.
But he did not see it through. This man was the first to
Bryukhanov went off to his office in ABK-1 and from break in the face of the monstrous responsibility which
there at 0300 hours he called Vladimir Vasilyevich only now took on its leaden weight and flattened his
Maryin, deputy secretary for the nuclear power industry entire being, which was weak and essentially maintained
of the CPSU Central Committee, at home.... on arrogance and vanity....

By that time, Solovyev (the name has been altered— Having ordered Akimov at 0200 hours to feed water into
G.M.), the nuclear plant's civil defense chief, arrived at the reactor, Anatoliy Dyatlov, deputy chief engineer for
the unit where the accident occurred. He had a radiom- operations, had left the unit control room and gone
eter with a scale that went to 250 roentgens. That was at outside accompanied by the dosimetrist, descending by
least something. Passing along the deaerator galleries to the stairway and elevator well. All of the asphalt around
the turbine hall and to the rubble, he realized that the was strewn with blocks of reactor graphite, pieces of
situation was extremely grave. A radiometer that read up structural elements and fuel. The air was thick and
to 250 roentgens went off the scale at various places in pulsating. That was the way the ionized and highly
the unit and rubble. radioactive plasma felt.
36 JPRS-UEA-034-89
23 October 1989

"Radioactivity?" Dyatlov asked the dosimetrist. "That's enough!" Dyatlov ordered. "Let's go back!"
"Off the scale, Anatoliy Stepanovich...." Stifled They returned to the unit control room. Gorbachenko
coughing sounds! "Damn! My throat is dry.... Off the went off to himself to the dosimetry panel. Krasnozhon,
scale at 1,000 microroentgens per second...." deputy chief of the radiation safety department, was
supposed to arrive any time.
"Numbskulls! Your instruments are not worth a damn!
You are wasting your time!" The total exposure they had received was 400 rads.
By 0500 hours, vomiting had begun. Fatal weakness.
"But who would think there would be such fields?!" the Headache. Reddish brown color of the face. Nuclear
dosimetrist suddenly became indignant. "In the locker, sunburn.
there is a radiometer with a scale that goes to 10,000
roentgens, but it is locked up. Krasnozhon has the key. I Gorbachenko and Dyatlov went off under their own
went to the locker to see, but I could not get through. It power to the ABK-1 and beyond—to the "ambulance" at
is blocked off. But there is radiation, I swear it. I feel it the medical unit.
without an instrument...."
"Turkeys! Numbskulls! Keeping an instrument in the
Testimony of Alfa Fedorovna Martynova, wife of V.V.
locker? Blockhead! Measure with your nose!" Maryin, head of the nuclear power industry sector of the
CPSU Central Committee:
"I have already been measuring it that way, Anatoliy
Stepanovich...," the dosimetrist said. "On 26 April 1986 at 0300 hours, the intercity phone
rang in our house. Bryukhanov was calling Maryin from
"If you would only.... After all, I am also measuring it, Chernobyl. When he finished the conversation, Maryin
you son of a bitch. But I am not supposed to. That is your told me: 'A horrible accident at Chernobyl; but the
job.... Get it?!" reactor is intact....' He quickly dressed and called for his
car. Just before he left, he called the highest leadership of
They approached all the way to the pile of rubble. It rose the party's Central Committee up through channels.
up like a mountain on a slant right from the ground all First of all, Frolyshev. He in turn called Dolgikh. Dol-
the way to the separator rooms.... gikh called Gorbachev and the members of the Polit-
"Incredible!" Dyatlov explained. "What have we done! buro. After that, he left for the Central Committee. At
The roof!" 0800 hours, he called home and asked me to prepare his
things for a trip: soap, tooth powder, toothbrush, towel,
The dosimetrist flicked the switch of the ranges back and and so on."
forth, muttering: "Off the scale.... Off the scale...." At 0400 hours, Bryukhanov received an order from
Moscow: Organize the continuous cooling of the nuclear
"You just take it and throw it you know where! Block- reactor.
heads...." They went to take a tour around the turbine
hall.... At the dosimetry control panel of the second stage,
Nikolay Gorbachenko was replaced by Krasnozhon,
Around on the asphalt there was graphite and chunks of deputy chief of the radiation safety department of the
fuel. Not entirely distinguishable in the darkness, but power plant. In answer to the questions of the operators
you could figure it out if you wanted to. As a matter of as to how much to work, he always made the same
fact, you would stumble against the graphite blocks and answer: at a range of 1,000 microroentgens per second, it
kick them away like in soccer. The actual radioactivity was off scale. Work 5 hours on the assumption of 25
was about 15,000 roentgens per hour. Which is why it rems.6 (This indicates that the deputy chief of the
went off the scale of the dosimetrist's radiometer. radiation safety service of the nuclear plant could not
himself determine the true intensity of the radiation.)
The mind did not take in what the eyes had seen. Their
tour took in a cross section of the turbine hall. There Akimov and Toptunov had already run up several times
were 19 fire engines lined up along the concrete wall of to the reactor to see the effect of the flow of water from
the intake pond. The din and the howl of the fire on the the second emergency feedwater pump. But the fire
roof of the turbine hall were audible. The flame was high. continued to howl and to howl. Akimov and Toptunov
Higher than the ventilation stack. were already reddish brown from the nuclear sunburn,
already nausea had upset their insides, Dyatlov, Davlet-
But it was a horrible affair! At this point, there were two bayev, and people from the turbine hall were already at
images, two thoughts, as it were, occurring and living in the medical unit, they had already sent unit shift chief
the mind of the deputy chief engineer for operations of Vladimir Alekseyevich Babichev to replace Akimov,
Unit 4. One: "The reactor is intact. Feedwater." The but...Akimov and Toptunov were not leaving. One can
other: "Graphite on the ground, fuel on the ground. only bow his head in the face of their bravery and
Where do you suppose it came from. Not clear from fearlessness. After all, they condemned themselves to a
where. Raging radioactivity. I sense the radioactivity certain death. Nevertheless, all of their actions followed
inside." from a false original premise: the reactor was intact!
 37
JPRS-UEA-034-89
23 October 1989

They were utterly unable to believe that the reactor had studied the condition of the switchboxes, trying to
been destroyed, that the water was not going to it, but, supply voltage to the feedwater pumps....
taking the nuclear trash along with it, it was flowing to His total exposure dose was 2,500 rads, enough to kill
the minus levels, soaking the cableways and high-voltage him five times. But after he had received first aid (they
distribution equipment and creating a threat of taking injected physiological solution into his vein) at the
power from all three power-generating units that were medical station in Pripyat, Lelechenko rushed back to
operating. the unit and worked there several more hours.
Something was keeping the water from getting to the He died a terrible painful death in Kiev.
reactor, Akimov guessed. Somewhere along the pipeline,
the valves were closed.... He and Toptunov went to the The heroism of Valeriy Ivanovich Perevozchenko, chief
feedwater room at level 24 of the reactor department. of the reactor shop shift, Petr Palamarchuk, adjuster,
The room was half-destroyed by the explosion. At the far and Nikolay Gorbachenko, dosimetrist, who rushed to
end. a break through which the sky could be seen, the rescue their comrades, is beyond dispute.
floor was covered with water and nuclear fuel with a
As for the actions of Akimov, Dyatlov, and Toptunov
radioactivity of about 5,000 roentgens per hour. How
long could a man live and work in such radiation fields? and those who helped them, their effort, full of self-
sacrifice and fearlessness, was nevertheless directed
Not long, that was for certain. Yet, there were the factors
of the emotional high, extraordinary inner collectedness, toward making the emergency situation worse.
mobilization of all energies from the delayed conscious- A false model and assessment of what had happened: the
ness of guilt, responsibility, and duty to people. And reactor was intact, it had to be cooled, the devastation
strength from somewhere generated itself. They should had been caused by an explosion of the safety control
already have been dying, but they were working...! system tank in the central hall—on the one hand, some-
what calmed Bryukhanov and Fomin, who reported that
And the air here, just like everywhere around and within model of the situation to Moscow and immediately
Unit 4, was heavy, pulsed with the radioactive ionized received an order in reply: continuously feed water into
gas, saturated with the entire range of long-lived radio- the reactor, cool it, while on the other hand.... Tempo-
nuclides which the destroyed reactor was disgorging. rarily, this order seemed to relieve some of the worry and
appeared to impart clarity to the situation: feed water,
By dint of great effort, they cracked open by hand the and everything will be fine. That in fact determined the
control valves on two feedwater lines, and then climbed entire character of the actions of Akimov, Toptunov,
over the debris to level 27, and in the small piping space Dyatlov, Nekhayev, Orlov, Uskov, and others who did
in which a mixture of water and fuel was almost up to the everything to get the emergency feedwater pump going
knees, they blew (cracked open) two valves on the 300 and to supply water to the reactor which they imagined
line. There were still the single valves on the left and to be intact and undamaged. This thought kept Bryukh-
right lines, but neither Akimov nor Toptunov any longer anov and Fomin from losing their senses; after all, it
had the strength to open them, nor did Nekhayev, Orlov, instilled hope....
nor Uskov, who were helping them.
But the store of water in the deaerator tanks was
Making a preliminary assessment of the situation and exhausted (only 480 m3). To be sure, they did connect a
the actions of the operating personnel after the explo- feed there from the chemical water treatment unit, from
sion, we can say that the turbine operators in the turbine other reserve tanks, thereby eliminating the possibility of
hall,'the firemen on the roof, and the electricians headed making up for leaks in the three other power-generating
by Äleksandr Grigoryevich Lelechenko, deputy chief of units that were operating. There, especially at the neigh-
the electrical shop, displayed unconditional heroism and boring Unit 3, an extremely difficult situation had come
self- sacrifice. These people prevented development of about, one which threatened the loss of cooling to the
the disaster both inside and outside the turbine hall and core.
thus saved the entire plant.
Yuriy Eduardovich Bagdasarov, Unit 3 shift chief, must
Aleksandr Grigoryevich Lelechenko, protecting the be given his due; in the control room at the moment of
young electricians from going unnecessarily into the the accident in the neighboring unit he had breathing
zone of high radiation, himself went into the electrolysis masks and potassium iodide tablets. As soon as the
space three times in order to turn off the flow of radiation situation worsened, he ordered all his subordi-
hydrogen to the emergency generators. When we take nates to put on the masks and take the tablets. When he
into account that the electrolysis space was alongside the realized that all the water from the pure condensate
pile of debris, and fragments of fuel and reactor graphite tanks and chemical treatment had been connected to the
were everywhere, and the radioactivity was between unit where the accident occurred, he immediately
5,000 and 15,000 roentgens per hour, one can get an idea reported to Fomin in the shelter that the reactor should
of how highly moral and heroic this 50-year-old man was be shut down. Fomin forbade it. Toward morning,
when he deliberately shielded young lives behind his Bagdasarov himself shut down Unit 3 and put the
own. And then in radioactive water up to his knees, he reactor in the cooling-off state, circulating water through
38 JPRS-UEA-034-89
23 October 1989

it from the bubbler pond. He acted courageously and are an experienced physicist. Determine what state the
displayed the highest degree of professionalism when he reactor is in. As a man coming from outside, you have no
prevented meltdown of the core of the third reactor on reason to lie. I beg of you. Best to climb up on the roof of
his shift.... Unit C and look from above. And...?"
During that time, Bryukhanov and Fomin were con- Sitnikov went out to meet his death. He toured the entire
stantly on the telephone in the shelter in ABK-1. Bryukh- reactor unit, he made a stop at the central hall. Even
anov was talking to Moscow, Fomin to the control room there, he realized that the reactor had been destroyed.
of Unit 4. But he did not feel this was sufficient. He climbed onto
the roof of Unit C (specialized chemical unit) and from
One and the same model of the situation was repeated there he looked at the reactor as might a bird in flight.
1,000 times to Moscow, to Maryin in the Central Com- The scene of unimaginable devastation was open to his
mittee, to Mayorets, the minister, to Veretennikov, chief gaze. The explosion had torn away the cast-in-place roof
of Soyuzatomenergo, and in Kiev to Sklyarov, Ukrainian of the central hall, and the pathetic remnants of the
power minister, and Revenko, oblast committee secre- caved-in concrete walls with the shapeless tentacles of
tary: "The reactor is intact, we are feeding water into the reinforcing steel protruding in every direction were rem-
system. The emergency safety control system tank in the iniscent of a gigantic sea anemone waiting in conceal-
central hall exploded. The explosion carried away the ment for the next living creature to come close to it,
roof. The radiation situation is within normal limits. whereupon it would plunge into its hellish nuclear belly.
One person died—Valeriy Khodemchuk, Vladimir Sitnikov drove away the obtrusive image, and feeling the
Shashenok has suffered 100-percent burns. In grave hot radioactive tentacles licking at his face and hands,
condition." scorching and burning his brain and his very soul, his
"The radiation situation is within normal limits...." Just insides, he began to examine fixedly what remained of
think of it! Of course, he had instruments whose mea- the central hall. The reactor had clearly exploded. The
suring range went only to 1,000 microroentgens per slab of the upper biological shield, with stumps of pipes
second (which is 3.6 roentgens per hour), but who and bundles of signal wires sticking out in every direc-
prevented Bryukhanov from having a sufficient number tion seemed to have been hurled up by the explosion,
of instruments with a wide range of measurements? Why and when it crashed down, it lodged in a slanting
were the instruments shut up in the locker, and why were position on the shaft of the reactor. The fire was howling
those which the dosimetrist had not in proper working from the melted openings to the right and left, producing
condition? Why did Bryukhanov ignore the report of an intolerable heat and stink. Sitnikov's entire body,
Solovyev, the plant's civil defense chief, and why did he especially his head, was being directly irradiated by
not send on to Moscow and Kiev Solovyev's figures on neutrons and gamma rays. He was breathing the thick
the radiation situation? radionuclide gas, more and more he was feeling an
intolerable burning in his chest, as though someone was
The factors involved here included, of course, cow- tearing apart his skeleton from within. The fire con-
ardice, a fear of responsibility, and—because of incom- tinued to burn and to burn....
petence—disbelief in the possibility of such a terrible
disaster. Indeed, for him what happened was inconceiv- He received at least some 1,500 roentgens to the head.
able. But that only explains his actions, it does not justify The central nervous system was affected by the irradia-
them. tion. In the Moscow clinic, they did not inject bone
marrow into him, and he died in spite of all the steps that
Bryukhanov received a message from Moscow that a were taken.
government commission had been organized, that the
first group of specialists from Moscow would be taking At 1000 hours, Sitnikov reported to Fomin and Bryukh-
off at 0900 hours. anov that the reactor was in his opinion destroyed. But
the report by Anatoliy Andreyevich Sitnikov caused
"Hold on! Cool the reactor!" irritation and was not honored. The feeding of the water
into the reactor continued.
At times, ^omin lost his composure. He would fall into a
stupor, then begin to wail and cry, to pound on the desks As we have already said, the first people to receive the
with his fists and his forehead, and then he would work blow of the nuclear disaster within the power-generating
up frantic and feverish activity. His sonorous baritone unit were Kurguz and Genrikh, central hall operators,
was filled with maximum tension. He brought pressure Valeriy Khodemchuk, main circulating pump operator,
to bear on Akimov and Dyatlov, demanding that water the adjuster Vladimir Shashenok, Razim Davletbayev,
be fed continuously to the reactor, he transferred to Unit deputy chief of the turbine shop, and the turbine
4 more and more people to replace those who were machine operators Brazhnik, Tormozin, Perchuk,
becoming disabled. Novik, Vershinin....
When they sent Dyatlov off to the medical unit, Fomin And outside the unit the first to become fearlessly
called in Anatoliy Andreyevich Sitnikov, deputy chief involved in fighting the fire were the firemen of Major
engineer for operation of the first stage, and said: "You Telyatnikov. Leonid Petrovich Telyatnikov, commander
 39
JPRS-UEA-034-89
23 October 1989

of the fire company, had an off-day and was supposed to He repeatedly went to the reactor, he climbed onto the
return to work a day later. He was just celebrating his roof of Unit C (level 71) to see the entire scene from
birthday with his brother when they called from the there and to determine the tactics for fighting the fire.
station. When he reached the scene of the fire, Telyat- When Telyatnikov turned up, Pravik became his right
nikov immediately realized that there were not enough hand, his first assistant.
men and he had to call help from somewhere. He ordered
Lieutenant Pravik to sound the alarm in the oblast. The fire had to be stopped along the decisive directions.
Pravik issued call No 3 over the walkie-talkie, which Telyatnikov sent one squad to protect the turbine hall,
meant that all fire trucks in Kiev Oblast were to come to two others halted the advance of the seething fire to
the nuclear power plant, wherever they might be. neighboring Unit 3, and they also put out the fire in the
central hall.
Firemen Shavrey and Petrovskiy climbed up to the roof
of the turbine hall from the hook-and-ladder truck. A Having heard Pravik's report, Telyatnikov himself
storm of fire and smoke was raging there. The boys from climbed several times to level 71 in order to get a better
the sixth unit, who were feeling bad, came to meet them. look at the direction of the fire's movement. The situa-
They helped them down the truck ladder, and they tion was after all changing from minute to minute. The
rushed to the fire.... lava of hot asphalt, the heavy poisonous smoke, dimin-
ished visibility and made it difficult to breathe. They
Prishchepa connected to the hydrant, and his team worked under the threat of unexpected eruptions of
climbed up the fire ladder to the roof of the turbine hall. flame and sudden structural collapses. In all, they extin-
When they reached the top, they saw that the roof had guished 37 sources of fire in the reactor department and
been destroyed in several places, some of the panels had on the roof of the turbine hall.
fallen down in, while others were very unstable. Prish-
chepa went down to alert his comrades to this. He The smoke burned the eyes, the melted asphalt stuck to
spotted Major Telyatnikov. He reported to him. "Set up their boots, and their helmets were showered with the
a permanent battle station and do not leave it until hot radioactive ash of burning graphite and keramzit.
victory," Telyatnikov said. Leonid Shavrey, who was in Pravik's squad, stayed at the
That is what they did. With Shavrey and Petrovskiy, post on the roof of Unit C, seeing that the fire did not
Prishchepa stayed on the roof of the turbine hall until jump anywhere else. It was horribly hot. Both outside
0500 hours. Then they were bad off. More accurately, and inside. No one at that point suspected radiation.
they had felt bad almost immediately, but they had Fire is fire, they did not notice anything supernatural.
tolerated it, they had thought that it came from the Shavrey even took off his helmet. It was suffocating,
smoke and fumes. But at 0500 hours it had become really there was pressure on his chest, he choked with a cough.
bad, fatally bad. Then they went down. But by then the But then the men became disabled one after the other.
fire had been put out.... Nausea, vomiting, mental confusion. At 0330 hours,
Telyatnikov went down to Akimov in the unit control
Within 5 minutes after the explosion, Andrey Polkovni- room. He reported the situation on the roof. He said that
kov's team was also at the scene of the accident. He something bad was happening to the boys. Was it radi-
turned his truck around and prepared to put water on the ation? They called for the dosimetrist. Gorbachenko
fire. He climbed to the roof twice to carry orders from came. He said that the radiation situation was problem-
Telyatnikov as to how to proceed. atical. He sent his assistant Pshenichnikov to Telyatni-
kov.
Pravik was the first to arrive at the disaster scene, which
is why his entire watch was sent to extinguish the roofing They started by way of the stairway-elevator well, which
of the turbine hall. Kibenok's watch, which arrived a bit ended at the top with a door to the roof. But the door
later, rushed to the reactor department. There the flame turned out to be locked. They were unable to break it
was raging at various levels. It was burning at five points down. They went back down to level 0 and went along
in the central hall. Kibenok, Vashchuk, Ignatenko, the street. They walked over graphite and fuel. Telyat-
Titenok, and Tishchura also rushed to fight that fire. nikov was already sick: his face was reddish brown,
This was combat against fire in the nuclear hell. When vomiting and headache. But he thought he had been
they extinguished the sources of fire in the separator poisoned by the smoke and had gotten overheated in the
rooms and in the reactor hall, there remained only the fire. And still.... They wanted to get a more accurate idea.
last and most important source—the reactor. At first, Pshenichnikov had a radiometer that went to 1,000
they did not get their bearings, they began to spray the microroentgens per second. Everywhere, below and on
core, which was howling with fire, from high-pressure the roof, the indicator went off scale, but the dosimetrist
fire hoses. But the water was powerless against the was unable to determine the true radiation situation. His
uncontrolled nuclear force. You cannot extinguish neu- radiometer showed only 4 roentgens per hour. As a
trons and gamma rays with water.... matter of fact, from place to place on the roof it ranged
Until Telyatnikov arrived, Lieutenant Pravik took upon from 2,000 to 15,000 roentgens per hour. The roof after
himself general supervision of the effort to put out the all had caught fire from the glowing graphite and fuel
fire. He himself went and scouted everything in detail. that fell on it. Once it mixed with the melted asphalt, all
40 JPRS-UEA-034-89
23 October 1989

of this turned into a highly radioactive nuclear mash state when they climbed down from the roof. By 0600
which the firemen were walking over. hours, Belokon was also feeling bad and was sent off to
the medical unit.
Down below, on the ground, as I have already said, it was
no better. Not only graphite and fragments of fuel, but The first thing that struck him when he saw the firemen
also nuclear dust which had fallen from the explosion was their terrible excitement, at the limit of their nerves.
cloud and covered everything with a thin poisonous He had not observed that previously. That is why he
coating. injected them with a tranquilizer. But, as it turned out
later, this was the nuclear fury of the nervous system, the
The driver V.V. Bulava relates: "I received an order to false supertonus, which was then displaced by profound
put myself under the disposition of Lieutenant Khmel. I depression....
went there. I set up the truck where the water was and
turned on the water supply. My truck had just been
repaired, it was just like new, it smelled of fresh paint. Testimony of Gennadiy Aleksandrovich Shasharin,
The wheels also had new tires and tubes. Just as I was former USSR deputy minister for power and
electrification:
approaching the unit, I heard something strike the right
front fender. I jumped out to see what it was. There it "At the moment of the explosion, I was in a sanatorium
was—a piece of reinforcement steel had pierced the tire, in Yalta. My wife and I were on vacation. At 0300 hours
it was sticking out of the wheel and catching the fender. on 26 April 1986, the telephone rang. They were calling
Well, mother fucker, such a shame, enough to make you from the Yalta department to say that there had been a
cry. It had just been repaired, such a pity. But for the serious accident at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant,
present I hooked the machine up to the water, there was that I was appointed chairman of the government com-
no time. And then I turned on the pumps, sat in the cab, mission and that I was to fly immediately to the scene of
but that piece of iron kept pestering me. I got out and the accident in Pripyat. I quickly dressed, went to the
saw that it had punctured the tube and was celebrating. administrator on duty and asked him to connect me to
No, I thought, I will not put up with anything like that. I the VPO Soyuzatomenergo in Moscow. G.A. Vereten-
climbed down from the truck and pulled at the damned nikov was already there (about 0400 hours). I asked him:
thing. It did not give. It gave me plenty of trouble.... And 'Did they use the emergency safety system? Are they
ultimately I ended up in the Moscow clinic with deep feeding water?' 'Yes,' Veretennikov replied.
radiation burns on my hands. Had I known, I would
have put on gloves. That's life...." "Then, the sanatorium administrator brought me a telex
signed by Mayorets, the minister. The telex mentioned
Kibenok's firemen along with their commander were the already that Boris Yevdokimovich Shcherbina, deputy
first to be disabled. Lieutenant Pravik was also in the chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers, had been
first group of those affected. By 0500 hours, they had put appointed chairman of the government commission and
out the fire. But a high price had been paid for the that I also had to be in Pripyat on 26 April. I was to take
victory. Seventeen firemen, among them Kibenok, Pra- off immediately.
vik, Telyatnikov, were sent off to the medical unit and
on the evening ofthat same day to Moscow. In all, 50 fire "It was just after 1000 hours when I arrived at Simfer-
trucks came to help at the scene of the accident from opol. The flight to Kiev was expected at 1100 hours, and
Chernobyl and other rayons in Kiev Oblast. But the I stopped by the oblast party committee. The people
main job had already been done. there plainly knew nothing. They expressed uneasiness
about construction of the nuclear power plant in the
Valentin Belokon, pediatrician, was on duty in the Crimea. I arrived in Kiev about 1300 hours. Sklyarov,
"emergency room" of the Pripyat medical unit on that the Ukrainian power minister, told me that Mayorets
fatal and heroic night. He and physician's assistant was to fly in at any moment with his team, that we
Aleksandr Skachok worked with two teams. Belokon was should wait...."
on a call to a patient when they called from the nuclear
power plant. Skachok, the physician's assistant, went to The story is taken up by Viktor Grigoryevich Smagin,
the power plant. Unit 4 shift chief:
At 0142 hours, Skachok called and said that there was a "I was supposed to replace Aleksandr Akimov at 0800
fire at the plant, people had been burned, a physician was hours on the morning of 26 April 1986. I had a good
needed. Belokon went with his driver Gumarov. They sleep that night. I heard no explosions. I woke at 0700
took another two spare vehicles. Along the road, they hours and went out on the balcony to have a smoke.
met Skachok's ambulance coming with its blinking light. From my apartment on the 14th floor I have a good view
As it later turned out, he was transporting Volodya of the nuclear power plant. I looked in that direction and
Shashenok. immediately realized that the central hall of my own
Unit 4 had been destroyed. There was fire and smoke
They broke down the boarded-up door of the medical over the unit. I realized that things were rotten. I rushed
station. Belokon went to Units 3 and 4 several times. He to the telephone to call the unit control room, but the
walked over the graphite and fuel. Titenok, Ignatenko, phones had already been cut off. To keep the informa-
Tishchura, and Vashchuk were already in a very bad tion from leaking. I got ready to leave. I told my wife to
 41
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close the doors and windows tightly. Not to let the foresee such an accident....' 'And what are you, if not
children out of the house. Not to go out herself either. To chiefs?' I thought and went on my way.
sit at home until I came back.... "All the windows in the corridor of the deaerator gal-
leries had been broken by the explosion. There was a
"I ran out into the street to the bus stop. But the bus did very acrid smell of ozone. My organism felt the strong
not go up to the plant. Soon, they sent a radio message radiation. But they say that there are no such sense
saying that they would not go to the second passageway organs. Evidently, still there is something. There was an
as usual, but to Unit 1. Everything there had already unpleasant feeling in the chest—an arbitrary sense of
been cut off by the police. The officers were not letting panic, but I controlled myself and kept my grip. It was
anyone through. Then, I showed my 24-hour pass for already light, and the pile of debris was already quite
supervisory operating personnel, and they let me visible through the window. Something black was strewn
through, but reluctantly. Near ABK-1,1 met Gundar and everywhere on the asphalt. I took a look—so it was
Tsarenko, Bryukhanov's deputies, who were headed for reactor graphite! Not bad! I understood that the reactor
the shelter. They told me: 'Go to Unit 4, Vitya, to take was in a bad way. But the full reality of what had
Babichev's place. He replaced Akimov at 0600 hours, it happened still did not get through to me.
probably has already got him.... Don't forget to change
clothes in the "greenhouse." '... "I entered the unit control room. Vladimir Nikolayevich
Babichev and Mikhail Alekseyevich Lyutov, deputy
"If I was changing clothes here, I reasoned, in ABK-2, chief engineer for science, were there. He was sitting at
then there was radiation. I went up to the 'greenhouse' the desk of the unit shift chief. I told Babichev that I had
(conference room). There was a pile of clothing there: come to replace him. It was 0740 hours. Babichev said
coveralls, high boots, breathing masks. While I was that he had come on duty 1.5 hours before and felt
changing clothes, I saw an MVD general (this was normal. In such cases, the arriving shift falls under the
Bedrov, who was Ukrainian deputy minister of internal command of the shift that is working. 'Akimov and
affairs)' who was on his way to Bryukhanov's office. Toptunov are still in the unit,' Babichev said, 'they're
opening valves. Go, Viktor, replace them. They are bad
"I changed clothes quickly, not knowing at that point off....'
that I would be coming back from the unit to the medical
station with severe nuclear sunburn and a dose of 280 "Lyutov, the deputy chief engineer for science, was
rads. But now I was in a hurry, I put on the cotton sitting there holding his head in his hands, dully
coveralls, the high boots, the cap, the 'respirator-200' repeating: 'Tell me, lads, the temperature of the graphite
and ran along the long corridor of the deaerator galleries in the reactor.... Tell me, and I will explain everything to
(which connected all four units) toward Unit 4. In the you....' "What graphite are you asking about, Mikhail
room that housed the 'Skala' computer, there had been a Alekseyevich?' I said in amazement. 'Almost all the
break, water was flowing from the ceiling onto the graphite is on the ground. Go look.... It is already light in
cabinets containing the equipment. At that point, I still the yard. I just saw it....' 'You what?!' Lyutov asked in a
did not know that the water was highly radioactive. frightened and distrustful tone. 'It doesn't make sense....'
There was no one in the room. Yura Badayev was 'Let us go see.'
nowhere to be found, they had already taken him away.
I went on further. Krasnozhon, deputy chief of the "He and I went to the corridor of the deaerator galleries
radiation safety department, was already at work in the and entered the backup control room, which was closer
room containing the dosimetry panel. Gorbachenko was to the pile of debris. The explosion had also broken the
not there. They had probably already taken him away, or windows there. The glass cracked and screeched under
he was somewhere else in the unit. Samoylenko, chief of our feet. The air, saturated with long-lived radionu-
the night shift of dosimetrists, was also in the room. clides, was dense and stinging. Gamma rays were
Krasnozhon and Samoylenko were abusing one another streaming directly from the pile of debris with an inten-
with bad language. I listened in and understood that the sity of about 15,000 roentgens per hour. But I did not
cursing was because they could not determine the radi- know about that at the time. My eyelids burned, my
ation situation. Samoylenko was pressing the point that throat, it checked my breathing. The heat inside came to
the radiation was immense, while Krasnozhon was the face, it dried the skin and stretched it.
saying that it was possible to work 5 hours on the
assumption of 25 rems. "There, you see: that black all around from the graph-
ite....' 'Can that be graphite?' Lyutov did not believe his
'"How long to work, guys?' I asked, interrupting their eyes. 'Then what is it?' I exclaimed in confusion, and in
squabble. 'The background is 1,000 microroentgens per the depth of my soul I myself also did not want to believe
second, that is, 3.6 roentgens per hour. You can work 5 what I saw. But I already understood that people would
hours on the assumption of accumulating 25 rems!' 'It's die in vain because of the lie, it was time to face up to
all lies,' Samoylenko summed up. Krasnozhon became everything. With vicious obstinacy, kindled by the radi-
enraged all over again. 'What, you have no other radi- ation, I continued to argue with Lyutov: 'You see!
ometers?' I asked. 'In the locker, yes, but it is obstructed Graphite blocks. That after all is clearly distinguishable.
by the explosion,' Krasnozhon said. 'The chiefs did not There is a block with the ear (protrusion), and there is
42 JPRS-UEA-034-89
23 October 1989

another one with the recess. And the holes in the middle in Moscow, whence ever fiercer and more persistent
for the production channel. Surely you see?' 'Yes, I see.... orders came: supply water to the reactor! The orders
But is it graphite...?' Lyutov continued to doubt. This instilled confidence and imparted strength when by all
blindness in people had always driven me to distraction. the biological laws they should not have had any....
To see only what you wanted to see. But it meant death!
'But what else could it be?!' I began once again to shout The pipeline in Room 712 was half-submerged. That
at the chief. 'How much of it is there here?' Lyutov water was emitting about 1,000 roentgens per hour. All
finally came to himself. 'It is not all here.... If it ejected the valves were without power. They had to be turned by
it, then it did so in every direction. But obviously not hand. Akimov and Toptunov turned for several hours,
all.... From my balcony at home, at 0700 hours I saw the they took in lethal doses. The water, which was not going
fire and smoke coming from the floor of the central to the reactor, was drenching the cableways, com-
hall.'" pounding the accident.... Smagin set to work on the third
valves along the way, but it turned out that they had been
They went back to the unit control room. There was also opened. He began to open them further. He was in the
a strong smell of radioactivity there, and Smagin caught room about 20 minutes and took a dose of 280 rads.
himself literally for the first time seeing his own Unit 4
control room, its panels, its instruments, its boards and Descending to the unit control room, he replaced
displays. It was all dead. The pointers of the indicating Babichev. With Smagin in the unit control room were
instruments had gone dead either off scale or at zero. The the senior engineers of the unit management Gashimov
DREG computer of the "Skala" system, which during and Breus, the SIUR Sasha Cheranev, his backup man
the unit's operation continuously printed out parame- Bakayev, and Kamyshnyy, chief of the reactor shop shift.
ters, was silent. All of these diagrams and printouts He ran around the unit, mainly using the deaerator
would now be waiting for their moment. The curves of galleries, to cut off the two left deaerator tanks, from
the production process had been frozen in them, the which water had reached the damaged emergency feed-
figures were mute witnesses of the atomic tragedy. Soon, water pump. But he was unable to cut them off. After the
they would cut them out and take them off to Moscow as explosion, the deaerator galleries ended up approxi-
the greatest treasure for gaining an idea of what hap- mately .5 meter away from the cast-in-place concrete, the
pened. The logs from the unit control room and all the rods having pulled out. It had become impossible to
work stations would also go off there. Later, all that manipulate the valves even by hand. They tried to put it
would be called the "bag of papers," but for the back in service, to insert pieces, but the high intensity of
moment.... Only 211 round synchroindicators of the the gamma fields did not allow them to do this. People
position of the control rods stood out distinctly against were disabled. Kamyshnyy was helped by Kovalev, a
the general dead background of panels lighted from senior turbine machine operator, and Kozlenko, a lathe
within by the emergency lamps for lighting up the dials. operator.
The pointers of the synchros were frozen in the position
of 2.5 meters, 4.5 meters short of the bottom.... At 0900 hours, the emergency feedwater pump that was
operating shut down, which was a blessing. They stopped
Smagin ran up the stairway-elevator well to replace pouring water into the lower areas. The water ended up
Toptunov and Akimov. Along the way, he met Tolya in the deaerators. Smagin was in communication with
Sitnikov. He was in a bad way, fighting weakness, and he Fomin and Bryukhanov, and the latter were in contact
said: "I have seen everything.... On assignment from with Moscow. The report went off to Moscow: "We are
Fomin and Bryukhanov, I have been in the central hall, supplying water!" An order came back in the other
on the roof of Unit C. There is a great deal of graphite direction: "Do not stop feeding water!" But that water
and fuel there. I looked into the reactor from above.... In did stop. Fomin searched feverishly for a way out.
my opinion, it is destroyed. There is a howling fire...." Finally, he thought of something. He sent Leonid Kon-
Swaying, he started down, and Smagin ran up. stantinovich Vodolazhko, deputy chief engineer for new
units, and Babichev, unit shift chief, to organize the flow
Akimov and Toptunov, who had become puffy and had of water into the clean condensate tanks, and then in
turned a deep reddish brown, spoke with difficulty. They turn to the reactor by means of the emergency pumps.
were experiencing terrible sufferings and at the same Fortunately, this escapade of Fomin's was not successful.
time a feeling of bewilderment and guilt. "I don't under-
stand anything," Akimov was hardly able to move his During the day of 26 April, new fire-fighting teams
swollen tongue, "we did everything correctly.... Why?... arriving at Pripyat would pump the water and fuel from
Oh, I feel bad, Vitya, we are done. We think we have the interstory cableways of the nuclear power plant and
opened all the valves along the way. Check the third one dump it into the cooling pond, where the radioactivity of
on each line...." the water over the entire area would reach the sixth
power of curies per liter, that is, it would be equal to the
It is strange, but an absolute majority of the operators, radioactivity of the water in the main loop while the
Smagin included, had taken what they wanted to see for nuclear reactor was operating.
reality in those incredible hours. "The reactor is
intact!"—that saving thought that eased the soul cast a More than 100 people had already been sent to the
spell on many here, in Pripyat, in Kiev, and indeed even medical unit. It was time to be reasonable. But no—the
 43
JPRS-UEA-034-89
23 October 1989

folly of Bryukhanov and Fomin continued: "The reactor direction of Yanov Station. We were to learn later that
is intact! Pour water into the reactor!" this was the most radioactive place in the city, because
the cloud of radioactive discharge had passed there. But
But in the depths of his soul Bryukhanov apparently had that became clear later, while at the time, the morning of
still taken note of the information from Sitnikov and 26 April, the children were simply interested in looking
Solovyev and he requested Moscow's "go-ahead" to at the reactor burning. Those children later developed
evacuate Pripyat. But a clear order came from Shcher- serious radiation disease.
bina, with whom his consultant L.P. Drach was in
telephone contact (Shcherbina was at that time in Bar- "After lunch, our children came back from school. They
naul): Do not cause a panic. had been warned there not to go out in the street, to do
a housecleaning with water, that was when people first
And at that time Pripyat, a city of nuclear power plant realized that it was serious.
workers, was waking up. Almost all the children had set
off for school.... "Different people learned about the accident at different
times, but by the evening of 26 April almost everyone
Testimony of Lyudmila Aleksandrovna Kharitonova, knew, but still the reaction was calm, since all the stores,
senior engineer of the production and distribution schools, and institutions were open. We thought that that
division of the construction administration of the meant that it was not so dangerous.
Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant:
"It became more disturbing as evening approached. This
"On Saturday, 26 April 1986, all preparations had been uneasiness spread from who knows where, perhaps from
made for the May Day holiday. The weather was warm the soul within, perhaps from the air in which the
that day. It was springtime. The gardens were in flower. metallic odor had become strong. What it was, I cannot
My husband, chief of the section for adjustment of the even say precisely. But metallic...
ventilation, intended to go off with the children to the
dacha after work. I had been washing since morning and "In the evening, the fire was more intense. They said the
hanging out bed linen on the balcony. Even by evening, graphite was burning. People saw the fire from far away,
millions of particles had accumulated on it. Among most but they paid no particular attention. 'Something is
of the construction and installation workers, no one burning....' 'The firemen have put it out....' 'It is still
knew anything as yet. Then, something leaked out about burning.'..."
the accident and the fire at Unit 4. But what had actually
happened no one really knew. At the industrial plant site, which is 300 meters from the
destroyed power-generating unit, the guard Danila Ter-
"The children went to school, small children played in entyevich Miruzhenko was waiting for 0800 hours in the
the street in sandboxes, they rode their bicycles. By the office of Gidroelektromontazh, and since the chief of the
evening of 26 April, the radioactivity in the hair and administration had not been answering his calls, he
clothing of all of them was already high, but we did not decided to set out 1.5 km to the construction adminis-
know that at the time. In our street, not far away they tration and report there to V.T. Kizima, chief of the
were selling tasty doughnuts. It was an ordinary day off. construction project, or to the dispatcher about what he
had seen at night. No one had come to replace him in the
"The construction workers went off to work, but they morning. Nor had anyone called him on the telephone
soon came back somewhere around noontime. My hus- about what he was to do. Then, he locked up the office
band also drove to work, and he said when he came back: and set off on foot to the construction administration.
'There's been an accident, they're not letting people in. He was already feeling very bad. Vomiting had begun.
The police have blocked off the plant....' He saw in the mirror that he had become badly sun-
"We decided to go to the dacha, but the police were burned during the night. What is more, in setting out for
the construction administration, for a time he was
stationed on the road and would not let us out of town.
We went back home. Strange, but we still perceived the walking along the trail of the nuclear discharge.
accident as something separate from our private life. He arrived at the administration, but it was locked up.
After all, there had been accidents before, but they There was no one. But it was Saturday. Some peasant he
concerned only the plant itself.... did not know was standing near the porch. He saw
"After lunch, they began to wash the streets of the city. Miruzhenko and said: "Get yourself to the medical unit
But this did not attract attention. It was something quickly, granddad. You are in a very bad way." Mir-
ordinary on a hot summer day. The sprinkler trucks were uzhenko somehow limped to the medical unit....
nothing unusual in the summer. An ordinary peaceful A crew of construction workers rode to Unit 5 on the
situation. Though I did somehow pay passing attention morning of 26 April. Vasiliy Trofimovich Kizima, a
to the white foam in the gutters, but I paid it no fearless and courageous man who was chief of the
importance. I thought that the water pressure was high. construction project, arrived at the same place. Before
"A group of neighborhood children were riding their that, he had gone by car to look at the pile of debris
bikes on the overpass; from there, you had a good view of around Unit 4. He had no dosimeters, and he did not
the unit where the accident had occurred from the know how much he had taken. He later told me: "I
44 JPRS-UEA-034-89
23 October 1989

guessed, of course, my chest was already very dry, my headquarters of the Pripyat City Party Committee. They
eyes burned. I thought that the burning was not just needed to familiarize themselves as rapidly as possible
incidental. Bryukhanov was surely spitting out radia- with the true state of affairs in order to have reliable
tion.... I looked at the pile of debris, I went off to Unit 5. information for a report when the members of the
The workers came to me with questions: How much to government commission arrived by plane.
work? What was the radioactivity? They were
demanding benefits for harmful working conditions. The The first thing would be to drive out to the damaged unit
coughing was choking them all, myself as well. The and examine everything with their own eyes. Still better
organism was rebelling against the plutonium, cesium, to examine the unit from the air. It turned out that there
and strontium. Not to mention the iodine-131 that built was a civil defense helicopter in the vicinity that had
up in the thyroid. It was hard to breathe. After all, no one landed not far from the overpass, which is near the
had masks. Nor did they have tablets of potassium Yanov Station. It took awhile to find binoculars and a
iodide. I called Bryukhanov. I asked for information photographer with a camera. They actually never found
about the situation. Bryukhanov replied: 'We are the binoculars, but they did find a photographer. The
studying the situation.' I called him again closer to MI-6 helicopter rose into the air an hour or 1.5 hours
lunchtime. He was again studying the situation. I am a after their arrival. On board were the photographer,
builder, not a nuclear expert, but I understood that B.Ya. Prushinskiy, chief engineer of the VPO Soy-
Comrade Bryukhanov was not master of the situation. uzatomenergo, and K.K. Polushkin, representative of
At 1200 hours, I discharged the workers to go home. To the reactor's chief designer. The pilot also had a dosim-
wait for further instructions from the management...." eter, which afterward made it possible to learn the
radiation dose absorbed.
Testimony of Vladimir Pavlovich Voloshko, chairman of
the Pripyat Gorispolkom: They approached from the direction of the concrete-
"...The entire day of 26 April Bryukhanov was beside mixing facility and the city of Pripyat. At an altitude of
himself, like a man who was lost. Fomin, he would cry in 400 meters. They dropped down to 250 to get a better
the pauses between issuing orders, he had lost his self- look. It was a depressing scene. Utter disintegration,
confidence. Both of them more or less came to them- there was no central hall. The unit was unrecognizable.
selves by evening, by the time Shcherbina arrived. As "Hover here," Prushinskiy requested.
though he could have brought salvation with him....
They sent Sitnikov, an excellent physicist, to take 1,500 Heaps of twisted beams, light-colored fragments of wall
roentgens! And then they didn't listen to him when he and roof panels, stainless steel pipe glittering in the
reported that the reactor had been destroyed. Out of the sunshine, black pieces of graphite, and warped fuel
5,500 people on the plant labor force, 4,000 vanished to assemblies rusty with corrosion were visible on the roof
parts unknown on the very first day...." of the VSRO (auxiliary reactor department systems)
unit, which was right next to the wall of Unit C (special
At 0900 hours on 26 April, L.V. Yeremeyeva, who was chemical facility). The pile of fuel and graphite was
on duty at Soyuzatomenergostroy in Moscow, tele- particularly dense around the square ventilation stack,
phoned the administration for construction of the Cher- which protruded from the roof of the VSRO and was
nobyl Nuclear Power Plant. In Pripyat, it was the con- right next to the wall of Unit C. Beyond the pile of
struction project's chief engineer Zemskov who picked twisted pipelines, broken reinforced-concrete structures,
up the receiver. Yeremeyeva asked him for the day's equipment, fuel, and graphite sloped upward right from
figures. "Don't bother us today. We have had a little the ground (occupying an area on the ground with a
accident here," Zemskov replied, having just made a radius of about 100 meters) from the former wall of the
conscientious tour of the damaged unit and having main circulating pump room at Row T, inside the
received a severe dose of radiation. demolished main circulating pump room, whose back
wall on the side of the KhZhTO building (liquid and
At 0900 hours on 26 April, a YaK-40 airplane took off solid waste storage), which could be seen on the right,
from Bykovo Airport in Moscow on a special trip. had miraculously remained intact.
The airplane's passengers included the first interdepart-
mental operational team of specialists consisting of It was exactly here, under this pile, that Valeriy Kho-
B.Ya. Prushinskiy, chief engineer of the VPO Soy- demchuk was buried, exactly here where Perevozchenko,
uzatomenergo, Ye.I. Ignatenko, deputy chief of the same reactor shop shift chief, absorbing a fatal dose of radia-
association, V.S. Konviz, deputy chief of the institute tion, had searched for his subordinate, clambering over
Gidroproyekt (the station's general designer), K.K. the heaps of structural fragments and equipment in the
Polushkin and Yu.N. Cherkashov, representatives of darkness and shouting shrilly in a throat that was
NIKIET (the chief designer of the RBMK reactor), Ye.P. parched and tightened by the radiation: "Valera! Reply!
Ryazantsev, representative of the Atomic Energy Insti- I am here! Respond!"
tute imeni I.V. Kurchatov, and others.
Prushinskiy and Polushkin did not know about all that,
At 1045 hours, the emergency operational team was nor could they have known. But, shaken, understanding
already in Kiev. Two hours later, the cars drew up to the that what had happened was not simply destruction, but
 45
JPRS-UEA-034-89
23 October 1989

something far greater and terrible, absorbed to the main circulating pump room, the drum separator com-
smallest detail the disaster scene spread before them. partments, the leaktight box? What had demolished
them? No! Bryukhanov's report was mistaken, if not
deceitful.
The dark black pieces of graphite and even entire bun-
dles of graphite blocks were visible all over the asphalt, And on the ground around the pile the black debris of the
which was blue in the sunlight, and on the roof of the reactor's graphite "brickwork." The eyes involuntarily
KhZhTO. A great deal of graphite, it was black with kept going back there to look. After all, if there was
graphite.... graphite on the ground, that meant....
They did not want to become conscious of the thought
Prushinskiy and Polushkin were struck dumb looking at that now was simple and obvious: the reactor had been
all that incredible devastation. What they were now destroyed.
looking at in reality had previously been portrayed and
simulated only in their imagination. But that, of course, After all, that admission would immediately raise
was much paler and simpler and in large part purely immense responsibility to people. No.... To millions of
theoretical. They both caught themselves not wanting to people. To the entire planet Earth. And an unimaginable
look at all of this, as if it did not concern them at all, but human tragedy.
was of concern to other people they were not connected
with. But it did concern them, them in particular! And Better simply to look. Without thinking, to absorb this
they burned with shame to have to look at such a thing. nightmare of the agonizing nuclear unit stinking with
They were, as it were, repelled by the stinking scene of radiation.
destruction. Oh, not to have to look at all that! But they
had to! They had to...! The uneven broken edges of the wall of Unit C protruded
on the VSRO side. Pieces of the graphite "brickwork" of
the reactor, square blocks with holes in the middle, could
The impression was that the main circulating pump be clearly seen on the roof of Unit C. It was not possible
room had been demolished by an explosion from within. that that could be a mistake. The helicopter hovered
But how many explosions had there been?! Long large quite close to the roof of Unit C, at perhaps 150 meters.
pipes, like headers, were visible in the pile that sloped The sun was high in the sky. The lighting was clear, with
upward from the ground all the way to the floor of the good contrast. Not a cloud in the sky. Close to the back
former separator room. One almost on the ground, wall of Unit C, the graphite was piled in a heap. Pieces of
another considerably higher, its upper end leaning on a graphite were uniformly scattered both on the roof of the
long pipe of the downcoming pipeline, the explosion had central hall of Unit 3 and on the roof of Unit C, from
probably thrown the pipeline up out of the shaft of the which the ventilation stack protruded, white with red
leaktight box. Beyond, on the floor, if the formless heap stripes. Graphite and fuel were also visible on the
could be called the floor, at the +32 level, were the observation platforms of the ventilation stack. These
130-ton drum separators displaced from their footings, radioactive "lanterns" were obviously "shining" in all
eight pieces of attached pipes, glittering gaily in the directions. And there was the roof of the deaerator
sunshine, a pile of all kinds of rubbish, pieces of concrete galleries, where 7 hours before the firemen of Major
floor and wall panels with girders dangling down. The Telyatnikov had fought the fire to a finish....
walls of the separator room had been swept away except
for an intact stump on the side of the central hall. The flat roof of the turbine hall seemed to have been
Between the stump of the wall and the pile of debris was pushed in, twisted reinforcing steel was protruding,
a rectangular gaping hole that opened into the blackness wrenched metal grids, black incinerations. The hardened
of the shaft of the leaktight box or the space of the rivulets of asphalt, in which the firefighters had been
reactor's upper piping. It seemed that some of the stuck up to the knee in the night, glistened in the sun. On
equipment and piping had been blown out of there by the sections of roof that had remained intact, there were
the explosion. That is, there had also been an explosion long and crazily interwoven lengths and coils of fire hose.
from there, which is why it was clear there, nothing was
protruding.... At the back wall of the turbine hall, in the corners along
Rows A and B and along the pressure basin were the red
Prushinskiy involuntarily recalled the main loop when it boxes of the fire trucks which the men had abandoned
was brand new, after installation—a holy of holies for and were now highly radioactive, dumb witnesses of the
technology. And now.... Where the central hall adjoined tragic struggle of fragile people against the visible and
the deaerator galleries, there was something left of the invisible elements.
back wall down below. The back wall of the reactor hall
at Row T was intact approximately to the +51 level (to Further to the right was the far-stretching reservoir of the
the footing of the emergency tank of the safety control cooling pond, rowboats and motorboats lay on the
system). It was in that tank, according to Bryukhanov's golden sandy banks like children's toys, and ahead the
report, that the hydrogen-oxygen mixture had exploded, deserted surface of the water which at that point was still
destroying the central hall. Fine, but then what about the clean....
46 JPRS-UEA-034-89
23 October 1989

People who had not managed to get away were leaving answer. It was quite a bit later that I learned that the
Unit 5, which was under construction, in groups and telephones had been disconnected. I was quite disturbed.
individually. These were the workers whom Kizima, The entire 1st half of the day I ran around, asked
chief of the construction project, had sent home long ago, everyone, looked for my husband. Everyone already
having not managed to get the truth from Bryukhanov. knew that there had been an accident, and I was seized
They would all follow the route of the radioactive cloud, by still greater anxiety. I went to Voloshko in the
they would all receive their dose and carry the terrible gorispolkom, to Gamanyuk in the party gorkom. Finally,
contamination home to their children on the soles of after inquiring of many people, I learned that he was at
their shoes. the medical unit. I rushed over there. But they would not
let me in. They said he was receiving an intravenous
"Hover directly over the reactor," Prushinskiy asked the injection at the time. I did not leave, I went up to the
pilot. "That's it! Right there! Shoot that!" window of his ward. Soon he came to the window. His
The photographer took several pictures. face was reddish brown. When he saw me, he began to
laugh, he was overexcited, he reassured me, asked me
They opened the door and looked down. The helicopter about the boys through the glass. It seemed to me that at
was in the ascending flow of the radioactive discharge. that point he was somehow particularly glad that he had
None of them in the helicopter had masks. There was no the sons. He said that I should not let them go into the
radiometer. street. He was even cheerful, and I felt a bit reassured."
Below, the black rectangle of the tank for holding spent
fuel. No water could be seen in it. Testimony of Gennadiy Nikolayevich Petrov, former
chief of the equipment department of
"The fuel in the tank will melt," Prushinskiy thought. Yuzhatomenergomontazh:
The reactor.... There it is—the round opening of the
reactor shaft. Like a squinting eye. The immense eyelid "I woke up about 1000 hours on 26 April. A day like any
of the reactor's upper biological shield was slewed other. Warm sunbeams on the floor, a blue sky through
around and heated to a bright cherry color. Flame and the windows. I was feeling good, I had come home, I
smoke were belching from the squinting eye. It was like would rest. I went on the balcony to have a smoke. The
a gigantic sty that was coming to a head and was about to street was already full of children. The little ones were
burst.... playing in the sand, building sand castles, making mud-
pies. Those a bit older were racing their bikes. Young
"Ten rems," the pilot said, looking through the eyepiece mothers were strolling with baby carriages. Life as ordi-
of the optical dosimeter. "Several times today I will have nary as can be. And suddenly I recalled the night, when
to...." "Out of here!" Prushinskiy ordered. The heli- I had gone up to the unit. I felt anxiety and fear. Now, I
copter slid off the central hall and set course for Pripyat. remembered my perplexity as well. How could it
"Yes, lads, this is the end," Konstantin Polushkin, happen? Everything was as usual and at the same time—
representative of the main designer, said thoughtfully. everything was horribly radioactive. The inner abhor-
rence of the invisible filth was delayed because life was
Testimony of Lyubov Nikolayevna Akimova, Aleksandr normal. The eyes saw that everything was clean, but in
Akimov's wife: fact everything was dirty. It did not make sense.
"My husband was a very amiable and sociable person.
"By lunchtime, the mood was gay. There began to be an
He had an easy way with people, but without familiarity. acrid smell in the air. Something metallic, but not
An obliging man who found a joy in life. Active in civic metallic, in the air, and something acrid, and a sour taste
work. He was a member of the Pripyat Gorkom. He
in the mouth next to the teeth, like when you test a weak
loved his sons very much. He was thoughtful. He loved flashlight battery with your tongue....
to hunt, especially after he went to work in the unit and
we bought a car. "Our neighbor Mikhail Vasilyevich Metelev, an electri-
"We came to Pripyat in 1976, after graduation from the cian with GEM, climbed up to the roof about 1100 hours
Moscow Power Engineering Institute. We first worked in and lay there in bathing trunks to get a suntan. Later on,
the Gidroproyekt group doing blueprints. In 1979, my he came down once to get something to drink, and he
husband took a job in operating the plant. He worked as said that his tan looked great today, better than ever
senior turbine management engineer, senior engineer of before. He said his skin immediately gave off a burned
the unit management, shift chief of the turbine shop, and smell. And he was in very high spirits, as though he had
deputy chief of the unit shift. In January 1986, he had too much to drink. He invited me, but I did not go.
became unit shift chief. That is the job he held at the There was no need to go to the beach, he said. And the
time of the accident. burning of the reactor was quite visible, distinct against
the background of the blue sky.
"On the morning of 26 April, he did not come home
from work. I tried to call him in the Unit 4 control room, "And in the air at that time, as I later learned, there were
but the telephone did not answer. I also called Bryukh- already about 1,000 millirems per hour. Plutonium,
anov, Fomin, and Dyatlov. But the telephones did not cesium, and strontium. And, of course, iodine-131,
 47
JPRS-UEA-034-89
23 October 1989

above all, was packed tight in the thyroid by evening. In "I think, Vladimir Vasilyevich," Mayorets entered the
everyone—the children, the adults.... discussion, "that we will be staying in Pripyat a long
time."
"But at that time we knew nothing. We were living an
ordinary human life, and I now realize how cheerful it Mayorets repeated this 1.5 hours later in the AN-2
was. airplane which carried the members of the commission
from the Zhulyana Airport to Pripyat. V.F. Sklyarov,
"Toward evening, the neighbor who had sunned himself UkSSR power minister, joined them on the flight from
on the roof began to vomit intensely, and they took him Kiev; he said:
off to the medical station. And then it seems to Moscow.
Or to Kiev. I do not know exactly. But that was perceived "I think we will get by with 2 days...."
as something separate. Because it was an ordinary
"Do not frighten us, Comrade Sklyarov. Our main task
summer day, the sun, the blue sky, the warm weather. It
would happen that way: someone would get sick, the and yours is to restore the damaged unit as quickly as
possible and connect it back to the power system."
ambulance would take someone away....
"And so it was an ordinary day in every way. Only later, At approximately this same time, the personal plane of
when they had told the whole story, did I recall that night B.Ye. Shcherbina, deputy chairman of the USSR
when I had gone up to the unit. I remembered the rut in Council of Ministers, was in flight from Barnaul to
the road in the light of the headlights, the cement plant Moscow. When he landed in the capital, the deputy
covered with cement dust. It stuck in my mind for some minister changed clothes, took a bite, and flew from
reason. And I thought: strange, even that rut was radio- Vnukovo Airport to Kiev. He would arrive in Pripyat by
active—just an ordinary rut, and that entire cement 2100 hours.
plant, and absolutely everything—the sky, the moon, the
blood, the brain, and people's thoughts. Everything...." Testimony of G.A. Shasharin:
Testimony of L.A. Kharitonova: "On the way from Kiev to Pripyat, I told Mayorets about
the working groups. I had thought about this earlier,
"Even on 26 April, in the afternoon, some people, in during the flight from Simferopol to Kiev. Here is the list
particular the children in school, had been cautioned not of groups which I proposed:
to leave the house. But most paid no attention to that. As
evening drew closer, it became clear that there was "1) a group to study the causes of the accident and the
reason for alarm. People dropped in on each other, they plant's safety—Shasharin and Meshkov responsible;
shared their fears. They talked, some decontaminated
themselves with alcohol, since there was nothing else. I "2) a group to study the radiation situation around the
do not know, I did not see it. But Pripyat was very lively, nuclear plant—Abagyan, Vorobyev, and Turovskiy
it was seething with people, as though they were pre- responsible;
paring for some kind of immense carnival. Of course, the "3) a group to repair the damage and restore opera-
May Day holidays were just ahead. But people's overex- tions—Semenov, Tsvirko, and installation people
citement was striking...." responsible;
At that time, the members of the government commis-
sion were preparing to take off from Bykovo Airport in "4) a group to evaluate the need to evacuate the popu-
Moscow. That flight included the following: Yu.N. lation of Pripyat and nearby farms and villages—
Shadrin, senior assistant to the general procurator; A.I. Shasharin, Sidorenko, and Legasov responsible;
Mayorets, USSR minister of power and electrification; "5) a group to provide instruments, equipment, and
V.V. Maryin, head of the sector for the nuclear power supplies—Glavenergokomplekt and Glavsnab respon-
industry of the CPSU Central Committee; A.N. sible.
Semenov, deputy power minister; A.G. Meshkov, first
deputy minister of medium machinebuilding; M.S. "We landed at the little airport between Pripyat and
Tsvirko, chief of Soyuzatomenergostroy; V.A. Shevelkin, Chernobyl. Cars were already waiting there. V.T. Kizima
deputy chief of Soyuzenergomontazh; L.P Drach, had also come in his GAZ. Maryin and I got in the GAZ
Shcherbina's consultant; Ye.I. Vorobyev, deputy USSR (Kizima was driving) and asked him to take us over to
minister of health; V.D. Turovskiy, representative of the damaged unit. Mayorets was also rushing there, but
USSR Minzdrav, and others. In the cabin of the YaK-40, we talked him out of it, and he went with the official
they sat facing one another on red sofas. Maryin shared group to the CPSU gorkom.
his thoughts with the members of the commission:
"We bypassed the police lines and turned toward the
"The main thing that has encouraged me is that the industrial area...."
nuclear reactor stood up! Thanks to Dollezhal! Bryukh-
anov awakened me with a telephone call at 0300 hours I will interrupt G.A. Shasharin in order to say a few
and said: A terrible accident, but the reactor is intact. We words about V.V. Maryin, CPSU Central Committee
are constantly feeding cooling water...." sector head.
48 JPRS-UEA-034-89
23 October 1989

Vladimir Vasilyevich Maryin is a construction engineer seemed to be visible around the reactor, like the solar
specializing in electric power plants by education and corona. A light black smoke was wisping up from the
experience. He worked for a long time as chief engineer corona. We thought at the time that this was something
of the construction and installation trust in Voronezh, on the floor burning. Maryin was in a livid rage, he was
and he took part in building the Novovoronezh Nuclear cursing, he kicked a graphite block in his anger. The
Power Plant. In 1969, he was summoned to the machine- emergency tank of the safety control system, crushed in
building department of the CPSU Central Committee as half, was quite visible, making it clear to me that it had
an instructor of the Central Committee on power engi- not exploded. The fearless Kizima walked around and
neering. I saw him rather frequently at Minenergo col- grieved like the owner that so you would build, he said,
legiums, party meetings, in critical inquiries into the you would build, and now you walk over the destroyed
work of nuclear power engineers in the associations and fruits of your labor. Since the morning, he had been here
main administrations. Maryin had taken an active part several times already, he said, in order to be sure that all
in the work of staff headquarters for starting up nuclear this was not a mirage.
plants, he personally knew the heads of the construction
administrations of all the nuclear plants, and directly, "We bypassed the plant and went into the shelter.
bypassing USSR Minenergo, he effectively helped the Prushinskiy, Ryazantsev, and Fomin were there with
construction projects to get equipment, materials, and Bryukhanov. Bryukhanov's motions were slowed down.
labor resources. He was gazing somewhere out ahead of him, apathy. But
he carried out orders rather efficiently and straightfor-
Personally. I had always liked this large, red-haired, very wardly. Fomin, by contrast, was overexcited, his eyes
shortsighted man with the booming voice and flashing were inflamed, they had a glint of madness. Then, there
horn-rimmed glasses with the thick lenses because of his would be a break, severe depression. In a call from Kiev,
directness and clarity of thought. He was industrious and I had asked Bryukhanov and Fomin whether the pipe-
dynamic and was constantly improving his qualifica- lines were intact? They assured me that they were intact.
tions as an engineer. For all that, Maryin was above all a It occurred to me at the time to feed boric acid solution
builder and did not understand operation of nuclear to the reactor. I talked to the supply people in Kiev, they
power plants. At the end of the seventies, when I was found several tons of boric acid and promised to deliver
working as sector chief in the VPO Soyuzatomenergo, I it to Pripyat by evening. But by evening, it had become
often went to his office in the Central Committee, where clear that all the pipelines from the reactor had been torn
at the time he was the only one on that staff concerned away and the acid was not necessary. But that would be
with the nuclear power industry. In discussing things, he understood only toward evening...."
would usually indulge in digressions, and he would
complain of being overloaded: "You have 10 men in
your section, and the country's entire nuclear power Testimony of Vladimir Nikolayevich Shishkin, deputy
industry depends on me alone...." And he asked me: chief of Soyuzelektromontazh of USSR Minenergo, a
"Give me some speedy help, supply me with materials participant in the conference in the Pripyat CPSU
and information...." Gorkom on 26 April 1986:

At the beginning of the eighties, the nuclear power "We all assembled in the office of A.S. Gamanyuk,
industry sector was organized in the Central Committee, gorkom first secretary. G.A. Shasharin was the first to
Maryin headed it, and then finally he had assistants. report. He was already reporting that the reactor was
G.A. Shasharin, an experienced nuclear engineer who destroyed, that he had seen graphite on the ground,
had worked for many years operating nuclear power pieces of fuel, but I did not have the strength to take this
plants and would in future be deputy minister of power in. In any case, it certainly was sudden. It seemed that
for the operation of nuclear plants, became one of them. the soul and mind needed as it were a smooth inner
It was with him that Maryin was at that point riding to transition to arrive at that horrible and truly catastrophic
the damaged unit in Kizima's GAZ automobile. reality.
On the way, they met buses and private automobiles. '"We need a collective assessment,' Shasharin said. 'Unit
The spontaneous evacuation had begun. Some had left 4 is without power. The transformers were shut off to
Pripyat forever even during the day on 26 April with avoid short circuits. Water has been poured onto all the
their families and radioactive belongings, without between-story cableways. Because of the soaking of the
waiting for the orders of the local authorities. switch boxes at the minus levels, the electricians were
told to find 700 meters of power cable and keep it in
Testimony of G.A. Shasharin: readiness....'

"Kizima drove us to the back of Unit 4. He had already '"What kind of a plan is that?!' Mayorets said indig-
been there more than once since the morning. We, of nantly. 'Why were the utility mains not cut off as
course, had no dosimeters at all. Graphite and fragments planned?'
of fuel were scattered around. We could see the drum
separators, moved from their footings, glistening in the '"Anatoliy Ivanovich, I am stating a fact. Why is another
sun. Above the floor of the central hall, a fiery halo question. In any case, they're hunting for the cable, water
 49
JPRS-UEA-034-89
23 October 1989

is being fed to the reactor, utility mains are being cut off. There have been casualties in the damaged unit. Two
It seems the radioactivity is high everywhere around operators—Valeriy Khodemchuk and Vladimir Shash-
Unit 4.' enok have died. Twelve persons were sent to the medical
unit in a serious condition. Another 40 people, less
'"Anatoliy Ivanovich!' Maryin interrupted Shasharin in serious, were hospitalized later. Casualties are con-
his booming bass. 'I have just gone past Unit 4 with tinuing to arrive.'
Gennadiy Aleksandrovich. It is a horrible scene. It is
incredible to think what we have come to. There is the "Gennadiy Vasilyevich Bedrov, tall, gray-haired, and
smell of fire fumes, and graphite is scattered around. I calm, MVD major general, UkSSR deputy minister of
even kicked a graphite block to make certain that it was internal affairs, came to Pripyat at 0500 hours on 26
real. Where does the graphite come from? All that April in a new uniform he had recently had made. Gold
graphite?' shoulder straps, a mosaic of medal ribbons, the badge of
a distinguished officer of the USSR MVD. But his
"'Bryukhanov!' the minister turned to the nuclear power uniform and gray hair were already terribly dirty, radio-
plant director. 'You reported that the radiation situation active, since the general had spent all the morning hours
is normal. What about the graphite?' right alongside the nuclear power plant. The hair and
clothing of all those present were radioactive now,
'"It is difficult even to imagine.... The graphite which we including those of Mayorets, the minister. Radiation,
received for the fifth power-generating unit, which is like death, does not sort out who you are—a minister or
under construction, is intact, all in its place. I first an ordinary mortal.
thought that it was that graphite, but it is still in place. In
that case, it is not precluded that the reactor erupted.... '"Anatoliy Ivanovich,' General Bedrov reported, 'at
Partially. But then....' 0500 hours, I was in the area of the damaged power-
generating unit. Police details took the baton from the
'"No one has managed to measure the radioactivity firemen. They cut off all the roads to the plant, to the
accurately,' Shasharin explained. 'We suppose that the settlement, and especially the fishing spot at the reser-
background is very high. There was one radiometer here, voir of the cooling pond. (We should note here that
but it was buried in the rubble.' General Bedrov, guessing the danger, had not imagined
'"Disgraceful! Why did the plant not have the necessary what it really was, so that his policemen were without
instruments?' dosimeters and personal safety equipment, and they
were all overirradiated to the last man. But they instinc-
'"An accident occurred that was not envisaged in the tively acted correctly—they sharply curtailed access to
design. The unthinkable happened.... We called for help the zone assumed to be dangerous.—G.M.) An opera-
from the country's civil defense and chemical forces. tions command staff was formed and was operating in
They will soon arrive.' the Pripyat police station. Staff members of the
Polesskiy, Ivanovskiy, and Chernobylskiy Rayon sec-
"It seemed that all those responsible for the catastrophe tions had come to help. By 0700 hours, there were more
wanted one thing—to postpone the moment of full than 1,000 MVD personnel in the disaster area. Details
recognition, when all the i's would be dotted. They of transport police were reinforced at the Yanov Rail-
wanted, as was customarily done before Chernobyl, for road Station. Freight trains with very valuable equip-
responsibility and blame to be spread ever so quietly ment were there at the moment of the explosion. Pas-
over everyone. That was the reason for this procrastina- senger trains have been arriving. Locomotive crews and
tion when every minute was precious, when delay threat- passengers know nothing about what has happened. It is
ened the city's innocent population with irradiation. summer now, the windows of the cars are open, the
When it was already in everyone's mind, the word railroad passes within 500 meters of the damaged unit.
'evacuation' was beating against people's skulls.... The train traffic has to be stopped. (We would like to
"But the reactor was burning all that time. The graphite praise General Bedrov once again. Of all those at the
was burning, spewing millions of curies of radioactivity meeting, he was the first to evaluate the situation cor-
into the sky. rectly.—G.M.) The posts are being manned not only by
sergeants and sergeant-majors, but even by police colo-
"Tn spite of the problematical and even grave situation nels. I am assigning the posts in the danger zone person-
at the damaged unit, the situation in Pripyat is business- ally. There has not been a single refusal to serve. The bus
like and calm,' Gamanyuk, first secretary of the Pripyat companies in Kiev have made a great effort. In case of
Party Gorkom, reported to Mayorets (at the time of the evacuation of the population, 1,100 buses have been
accident he was in the medical unit for an examination, driven to Chernobyl and wait for instructions from the
but on the morning of 26 April he left his hospital bed government commission....'
and went to work). 'No panic or disorder. Normal,
ordinary life on a day off. Children are playing in the '"Why are you telling me all this about evacuation?!' the
streets, athletic competitions are taking place, classes in minister erupted. 'Do you want to cause a panic? The
the schools. Even weddings are being celebrated. Today, reactor has to be shut down and everything stopped. The
they have celebrated 16 weddings of Komsomol young radiation will return to normal. What about the reactor,
people. We put a stop to false rumors and loose talk. Comrade Shasharin?'
50 JPRS-UEA-034-89
23 October 1989

"'The operators, according to the data of Fomin and usually smooth chestnut-colored hair had tufts pro-
Bryukhanov, shut it down by pressing the AZ-5 button.' truding, his pale blue eyes were looking without blinking
Shasharin was entitled to speak that way; after all, he still behind the enormous lenses of the imported spectacles.
had not been up in the air.... At that point, we were all poisoned and killed. Except for
Mayorets probably. As always, he was neat, with an even
'"And where are the operators? Can they be summoned?' pink part in his hair, nothing to be seen in his face.
the minister insisted.
'"What do you propose?' Mayorets asked.
'"The operators are in the medical unit, Anatoliy
Ivanovich.... In a very serious condition.' '"Damned if I know, it is difficult to understand all at
once. The graphite is burning in the reactor. It has to be
'"I proposed evacuation early this morning,' Bryukh- extinguished. That is the very first thing. But how, with
anov said dully. 'I asked Moscow, Comrade Drach. But what...we will have to think.'
they told me to do nothing along those lines until
Shcherbina arrived. And not allow panic' "We all went into Gamanyuk's office. Shasharin began
to read the lists of working groups. When it came to the
'"What does civil defense say?' recovery operations, the representative of the general
designer shouted from his seat:
"Solovyev stood up, that same civil defense chief of the
nuclear power plant, who in the first 2 hours after the "it is not recovery we need, but burial!'
explosion determined a dangerous degree of radiation by
means of the only radiometer with a scale that went up to '"Don't get off the subject, Comrade Konviz!' Mayorets
250 roentgens. (The reader knows Bryukhanov's reac- interrupted him. 'Within the hour, the groups are to
tion. But this should be added: During the night, prepare measures for a report to Shcherbina. He should
Solovyev sent a separate distress signal to the republic's arrive any time....'"
civil defense, for which he deserves every praise.)
"in the range of 250 roentgens off the scale in the areas Testimony of G.A. Shasharin:
of the pile of debris, the turbine hall, the central hall, and
other places around and within the unit. Immediate "Later, we went up in the helicopter with Maryin and the
evacuation is necessary, Anatoliy Ivanovich.' deputy chairman of Gosatomenergonadzor and
Sidorenko, corresponding member of the USSR
"Turovskiy, representative of USSR Minzdrav, said: i Academy of Sciences. We hovered over the unit at an
believe evacuation is absolutely necessary. From what altitude of 250 to 300 meters. It seems the pilot had a
we have seen in the medical unit...I am referring to the dosimeter. Although no radiometer. At that altitude, the
examination of patients...they are in a serious condition. radiation was 300 roentgens per hour. The upper slab
The doses, according to the first superficial assessments, had been heated to a bright yellow color by contrast with
exceed lethal doses by a factor of between 3 and 5. the bright cherry color reported by Prushinskiy. Which
Indisputable diffusion of radioactivity over great dis- meant that the temperature in the reactor had risen. The
tances from the power-generating unit.' slab was not as crooked where it lay on the shaft as later,
when they threw in the bags of sand. The weight slewed
'"But if you are wrong?' Mayorets asked, restraining his it around. At this point, it had finally become clear that
dissatisfaction. 'We will analyze the situation and make the reactor was destroyed. Sidorenko proposed throwing
a decision. But I am against evacuation. The danger is about 40 tons of lead into the reactor in order to reduce
clearly being exaggerated.' the radiation. I was categorically opposed. That kind of
weight from an altitude of 200 meters was an immense
"They announced an intermission." dynamic load. It would make a hole all the way through,
right down to the bubbler pond, and the entire melted
Testimony of B.Ya. Prushinskiy, chief engineer of the core would flow down into the water of the pond. Then
VPO Soyuzatomenergo: you would have to run wherever your legs would take
"When we returned to the city committee headquarters you.
with Kosta Polushkin, Shasharin and Mayorets were
standing in the hall smoking. We came up and right there "When Shcherbina arrived, I went to him before the
in the hall reported to the minister the results of our conference and said that the city had to be evacuated
examination of Unit 4 from the air: It can be assumed immediately. He replied that that could cause panic..."
that the reactor has been destroyed. The cooling is By that time, by approximately 1900 hours, all the stocks
ineffective. of water at the nuclear power plant were at an end. The
'"The reactor has a lid,' Polushkin said. pumps started up with such an effort by the overirradi-
ated electricians tripped. Radioactivity rose very rapidly
"Inhaling deeply, in puffs of smoke, frail anyway and in everywhere. The damaged reactor continued to belch
collegium meetings seeming like a plaything by compar- millions of curies of radioactivity from its glowing
ison with heavyweights like deputy minister Semenov, throat. In the air, there was the entire range of radioac-
Shasharin now looked even more haggard and pale, his tive isotopes, including plutonium, americium, and
 51
JPRS-UEA-034-89
23 October 1989

curium. All of these isotopes were incorporated (pene- It was only 14 hours after the accident that a plane
trated) into people's organisms, both those who were brought a specialized team from Moscow consisting of
working at the nuclear power plant and also the inhab- physicists, therapeutic radiologists, and hematologists.
itants of Pripyat. During 26 and 27 April, right up until One to three blood analyses were performed, outpatient
the evacuation, radionuclides continued to be accumu- cards were filled out with entries indicating clinical
lated, and in addition, people were exposed to external manifestations after the accident, patients' complaints,
gamma and beta irradiation. the number of leukocytes and the leukocyte distribu-
tion....

At the Pripyat City Medical Unit

Testimony of V.G. Smagin (who took over the shift
The first group of casualties, as we already know, were from Akimov):
transported to the medical unit some 30 to 40 minutes
after the explosion. A particularly difficult feature of the "They sat the five of us down in the ambulance and took
nuclear disaster at Chernobyl was that the effect of us off to the medical unit in Pripyat. They used the RUP
radiation on the human organism was combined: pow- (instrument for measuring radioactivity) to measure
erful external and internal irradiation, compounded by everyone's radioactivity. We washed several times. We
thermal burns and the wetting of the skin. The pattern of were still radioactive. There were several therapeutists in
the actual lesions and doses could not be established the room for physicians; Lyudmila Ivanovna Prilepskaya
immediately because the physicians did not have data on immediately took me off to her office, her husband was
the true radiation fields. And only the primary reactions also a unit shift chief, and our families were friendly. But
of the people irradiated: very intense erythema (the at this point, the other lads and I began vomiting. We
nuclear sunburn), edema, burns, nausea, vomiting, saw a bucket or a wastebasket, we took it and three of us
weakness, in some a state of shock, indicated the severity at once began to vomit into that bucket.
of the lesions. What is more, the medical unit serving the "Prilepskaya asked where I had been in the unit and
Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant was not equipped with what the radiation fields were there? She simply could
the necessary radiometric apparatus, and the physicians not understand that there were fields there everywhere,
were not trained from the organizational standpoint to that it was dirty everywhere. The entire nuclear plant
receive such patients. The necessary urgent classification was an unbroken radiation field. I told her what I could
of casualties according to the pattern of the course of the between bouts of vomiting. I said that none of us knew
disease was not done. In such cases, the main criterion exactly what the fields were. They were off scale at 1,000
chosen is the probable outcome: microroentgens per second, and that was all.
1) recovery impossible or unlikely, "They put the IV needle in my vein. After about 2 hours,
2) recovery possible assuming the use of up-to-date I began to feel vigor in my body. When the IV was
therapeutic means and methods, finished, I stood up and began to look for a smoke. There
were two others there in the ward. On one bed, a guard
3) recovery likely, who was an ensign. He kept saying: 'I am going to get
away from here and go home. My wife and children are
4) recovery guaranteed. worried. They do not know where I am. And I do not
This classification is particularly important when a large know what has happened to them.' 'Just lie still,' I told
number of people have been irradiated and there is a him. 'You have taken rems, now get your treatment....'
need for rapid determination of whose life can be saved "On the other bed was a young adjuster from the
by aid rendered promptly. It is especially important here Chernobyl startup and adjustment enterprise. When he
to know when the irradiation began, how long it lasted, learned that Volodya Shashenok had died in the
whether the skin was dry or wet (radionuclides diffuse morning, it seems at 0600 hours, then he began to shout
within more intensively through wet skin, especially skin why had they concealed it from him that he was dead,
that has been injured by burns and wounds). why hadn't they told him? He was hysterical. And he
The casualties were not classified with respect to the seemed to have taken fright. If Shashenok had died, that
pattern of acute radiation sickness, and their contact meant that he could also die. He shouted out loud: 'They
with one another was unrestricted. Sufficient decontam- are concealing everything, hiding everything...! Why.
ination of the skin was not provided for (only a washing didn't they tell me?!' Then he calmed down, but then he
off under the shower, which was ineffective or little was seized with an exhausting bout of hiccuping.
effective because of diffusion of radionuclides and accu- "It was 'dirty' in the medical unit. The instrument
mulation in the grainy layer under the epidermis). showed radioactivity. They had mobilized women from
Principal attention was paid to treating patients in the Yuzhatomenergomontazh. They were constantly
first group with very severe primary reactions, who were washing the floors in the corridor and in the wards. The
immediately given intravenous injections, and patients dosimetrist would come and measure everything. He
with very severe thermal burns (the firemen, Shashenok kept muttering all the time: 'They wash and they wash,
and Kurguz). but it is still dirty....'
52 JPRS-UEA-034-89
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"I heard my name being called through the open "Everyone who felt better collected in the smoking
window. I looked, and down below was Serezha Kamy- room. They were thinking about one thing: Why had it
shnyy from my shift. He was asking: 'So, how are things?' exploded? Sasha Akimov was also there, mournful and
And I answered him with: 'Have you got a smoke?' They severely 'sunburned.' Anatoliy Stepanovich Dyatlov
dropped down a string and brought the cigarettes back came in. He was smoking and thinking. The way he
up on the string. I told him: 'And you, Serega, what are usually was. Someone asked him: 'How much did you
you doing wandering around? You picked it up, too. take in, Stepanych?' 'W-well, I think, 40 r-roentgens....
Come in with us.' 'But I feel normal. I just decontami- We will live....'
nated myself.' He pulled a bottle of vodka from his
pocket. 'Do you need some?' 'Oh, no! They have already "He was wrong by exactly a factor of 10. In Moscow's
poured it into me....' Clinic No 6, they read him at 400 roentgens. Third-
degree acute radiation sickness. And he had scorched his
"I stopped in the ward where Lena Toptunov was. He feet and legs plenty when he walked through the fuel and
was lying there. All reddish brown. His mouth and lips graphite around the unit.
were very swollen. So was his tongue. It was difficult for "The word 'sabotage' was sticking in many people's
him to speak. One thing was torturing everyone: Why minds. Because when you cannot explain things, you
had it exploded? I asked him about the reactivity margin. think of the devil himself. Akimov had one answer to my
Speaking with difficulty, he said that 'Skala' showed 18 question: 'We did everything correctly.... I do not under-
rods. But it could have been wrong. The computer was stand why it happened....' Dyatlov was also convinced of
sometimes wrong.... the correctness of his actions.
"Volodya Shashenok died from burns and radiation at "The team of physicians from Moscow Clinic No 6 had
0600 hours. It seems they had already buried him in a arrived by evening. They walked through the wards.
village cemetery. But Aleksandr Lelechenko, deputy They examined us. Georgiy Dmitriyevich Selidovkin, a
chief of the electric shop, had felt so good after the IV doctor with a beard, selected the first group—28 peo-
that he had run out of the medical unit and gone back to ple—to be sent to Moscow at once. He made the selec-
the plant again. The second time they had already taken tion on the basis of the nuclear sunburn. He was not
him off to Kiev in a very serious condition. He died there interested in analyses. Almost all 28 would die....
in terrible pain. The total dose he received was 2,500
roentgens. Neither intensive therapy nor bone marrow "The damaged unit was quite visible through the
transplant could help him.... window. The graphite burned into the night. The
gigantic flame curled around the ventilation stack. It was
"Many felt better after the IV. I met Proskuryakov and terrible to look at. They put 26 people in a red Ikarus
Kudryavtsev in the corridor. They were both holding bus. They took Kurguz and Palamarchuk off in the
their arms pressed against their chest. Their arms had ambulance. They took off from Borispol about 0300
remained in the bent position the way they had shielded hours. They sent the rest who were a bit better, including
themselves from the radiation of the reactor in the me, to Clinic No 6 in Moscow on 27 April. We went in
central hall, and they could not straighten them out, and three Ikarus buses. Screams and tears during the trip. We
the pain was terrible. all went without changing clothes, in the striped hospital
clothing.
"Valera Perevozchenko did not get up after the IV. He
lay there in silence, turned to the wall. Tolya Kurguz was "In Clinic No 6, they determined that I had taken 280
covered all over with burn blisters. In some places, the rads...."
skin was broken and was hanging off in tatters. His face About 2100 hours on 26 April 1986, Boris Yevdokimo-
and hands were severely swollen and covered with scabs. vich Shcherbina, deputy chairman of the USSR Council
The scabs would break with every movement of the of Ministers, arrived in Pripyat. He had become the first
muscles. And the pain that was wasting him. He com- chairman of the government commission to prepare the
plained that his entire body had become an unrelenting damage of the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl. Paler than
pain. Petya Palamarchuk, who had carried Volodya usual, with his lips pressed tightly and the imperious
Shashenok out of the nuclear hell, was in the same look of the deep folds in his lean cheeks, he was calm,
condition. collected, and concentrated.
"The physicians had, of course, become irradiated them- At that point, he still did not realize that around, both on
selves. The atmosphere and the air in the medical unit the street and indoors, the air was saturated with radio-
were radioactive. The seriously ill were also radiating activity, was emitting gamma and beta rays, absolutely
intensely; after all, they had inhaled the radionuclides indifferent as to who was irradiated—the devil's own,
and absorbed them into their skin. ministers, or ordinary mortals.
"There has been nothing like it anywhere in the world. He was endowed with immense power, but he was a
We were the first after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But human being, and it took the course with him that it
there is nothing to be proud of here.... takes in a human being: first, the storm would build
 53
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23 October 1989

underneath against the background of external calm, and Finally, someone mentioned that fire, including a
then, when he had figured something out and was nuclear fire, can be safely extinguished with sand. Seal it
outlining the strategies, the real storm would burst out, a up tight. From above. There was no other direction from
vicious storm of haste and impatience: faster, faster! which you could get to the reactor.
Come on, come on! And at this point it became clear that it could not be
done without aircraft. They sent an urgent request to
But a cosmic tragedy was taking place at Chernobyl. And
the cosmos has to be crushed not only with cosmic force, Kiev for helicopter pilots.
but also with the depth of reason, which is also the Major General N.T. Antoshkin, deputy Air Force com-
cosmos, just that it is alive and presumably more pow- mander of the Kiev Military District, was already on his
erful. way to Chernobyl. Meanwhile, the government commis-
sion was deciding the issue of the evacuation. The civil
Mayorets was forced to admit that Unit 4 had been defense and medical people from USSR Minzdrav were
destroyed. That the reactor had also been destroyed. The especially insistent on it.
unit had to be covered (buried). More than 200,000 m3
of concrete would have to be packed into the interior of "Evacuation is necessary at once!" Vorobyev, deputy
the unit destroyed by the explosion. It seemed the thing health minister, argued fervently. "There is plutonium,
to do was to make metal boxes, encase the unit in them, cesium, strontium...in the air. The condition of the
and then cover them with concrete. It was not clear what casualties in the medical unit indicates very intense
should be done with the reactor. It was glowing. Thought radiation fields. The thyroid glands of people, including
had to be given to evacuation. children, have been larded with radioactive iodine. No
one is doing prevention with potassium iodide.... Incred-
"Don't be in a hurry with the evacuation," Shcherbina ible...!"
said calmly, but it was obvious that the calm was forced.
Ah, how everyone would have liked for there to be no Shcherbina summed up: "We are evacuating the city on
evacuation! After all, so far the new ministry had had a the morning of 27 April. Bring up all 1,100 buses during
good beginning. They had increased the coefficient of the night to the highway between Chernobyl and Pripyat.
installed capacity, and the frequency had been stabilized You, General Bedrov, please set up sentries at every
in power systems.... And now.... house. Let no one in the street. In the morning, civil
defense will announce the necessary information to the
When he had heard everyone, Shcherbina invited those population over the radio. And also state the exact time
present to take part in a collective reflection: "Think, of the evacuation. Carry potassium iodide tablets around
comrades, make proposals. At this point, we need a to people at home. Enlist Komsomol members for that
brainstorm. I do not believe that it would be impossible purpose."
to extinguish the reactor. Gas wells have been extin-
guished, it was not this kind of fire, a firestorm. But they Shcherbina, Shasharin, and Legasov took a helicopter up
did put them out!" into the radioactive nighttime sky of Pripyat and hov-
ered over the damaged unit. Shcherbina looked through
And it began. Everyone presented what came into his the binoculars at the reactor, which had been heated to a
head. That is the point of the brainstorming method: bright yellow glow against which the dark smoke and
even some nonsense, random talk, heresy, might unex- tongues of flame were clearly visible. And in the cracks
pectedly suggest a serious idea. All manner of things were on the right and left, in the bowels of the destroyed core,
proposed: even lifting an immense tank of water by the light was a twinkling starry blue. It was as though
helicopter and pouring that tank on the reactor and someone omnipotent had set up an immense invisible
making a kind of nuclear Trojan horse in the form of an bellows and was supplying a blast to this gigantic nuclear
immense hollow concrete block. Put people inside and hearth, which was 20 meters in diameter. He looked with
move this block to the reactor, and when you are quite respect on this immense nuclear monster, which
close, then throw something to cover the reactor itself.... undoubtedly possessed more power than even the deputy
Someone seriously asked: "But how are you going to chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers. "Just see
move this cumbersome thing, this what do you call it, how it flared up! And how much sand has to be thrown
Trojan horse? You need wheels and a motor...." The idea into that crater," Shcherbina pronounced the letter "e"
was immediately discarded. in the word "crater" as a very soft vowel. "Fully assem-
bled and loaded with fuel, the reactor weighs 10,000
Shcherbina himself expressed an idea. He proposed tons," Shasharin explained. "If half of the graphite and
sending fireboats up the intake channel which ran along- fuel have been disgorged, that would be about 1,000
side the unit and pouring water on the burning reactor tons, and a pit would be formed 4 meters deep and 20
from there. One of the physicists explained that you meters in diameter. Sand has a higher density than
could not put out a nuclear fire with water, the radioac- graphite. I think 3,000 or 4,000 tons of sand will have to
tivity would rage still more. The water would evaporate, be dropped." "The helicopter pilots will have to do a job.
and the steam would cover everything around with fuel. What is the radioactivity at an altitude of 250 meters?"
The idea of the fireboats was also discarded. "Three hundred roentgens per hour. But when the load
54 JPRS-UEA-034-89
23 October 1989

comes down on the reactor, this will raise nuclear dust, the power minister. I do not know, surely my dressing
and the radioactivity at that altitude will rise sharply. gown and everything I had on was very 'dirty.' They did
And the bombing will have to be done from a lower not take a reading of me...."
altitude...."
The minister's visa on Tsechelskaya's letter reads:
The helicopter slipped away from the crater.
'"Allow Comrade I.P. Tsechelskaya to apply to any
Shcherbina was comparatively calm. His calm was organization of USSR Minenergo. They will give her 250
explained not only by the deputy minister's self-control, rubles.' But that visa was dated 10 July 1986. And this
but also to a considerable extent by his being incom- was 27 April..."
pletely informed about nuclear details and also by the
indefiniteness of the situation. In just a few hours, when Testimony of G.N. Petrov:
the first decisions had been made, he would begin to put
pressure on his subordinates, to be in a hurry, issuing "At exactly 1400 hours, the buses came to every
accusations of slowness and every mortal sin there is.... entrance. They cautioned us once again over the radio:
dress lightly, take a minimum of things, we would be
coming back in 3 days. Even then, the involuntary
thought flickered: if many things were taken, then even
27 April 1986 1,000 buses would not be enough.
Long after midnight on 27 April, Maj Gen Antoshkin "Most people obeyed and did not even take what money
called the first pair of helicopters by walkie-talkie. But they had. But in general our people are good: they joked,
they could not come down in that situation without they cheered up each other, they reassured the children.
someone on the ground to guide them. Antoshkin rushed They would say to them: we are going to see grandma...to
to the roof of the 10-story "Pripyat" Hotel with his the film festival..to the circus.... The adults and the
walkie-talkie and became the guide for the flight. Unit 4, children were pale, sad, and silent. Forced cheerfulness
which the explosion had ravaged, was visible as in the and anxiety were in the air together with the radiation.
palm of his hand with the corona of flame over the But it was all efficient. Many people had gone downstairs
reactor. Further to the right, beyond the Yanov Station ahead of time and crowded outside with their children.
and overpass was the highway to Chernobyl, and on it They kept asking them to go back inside the entrance.
the endless column of empty buses of various colors When they announced the boarding, we went out of the
hiding in the distant morning haze: red, green, blue, and entrance and right into the bus. Those who lingered
yellow, standing still, waiting for orders. Eleven hundred behind ran from bus to bus, simply taking unnecessary
buses were stretched along the entire road from Pripyat rems. And so, in a day of peaceful, ordinary life, we had
to Chernobyl, which is 20 km. The picture of this convoy taken more than enough both outside and inside.
standing still on the highway was oppressive.
"We drove to Ivankov (60 km from Pripyat) and there
At 1330 hours, the convoy started up, moved, crawled were scattered among the villages. Not everyone took us
over the overpass, and broke up into separate vehicles at in willingly. One well-off peasant would not let my
the entrances of the snow-white apartment buildings. family into his immense brick house, not because of the
And then, leaving Pripyat, taking people away forever, dangerous radiation (he did not understand about that,
they carried away on their wheels millions of particles of and explanations had no effect on him), but out of greed.
radioactivity, contaminating the roads of settlements He had not built it, he said, to let strangers in....
and cities....
"Many who had left the buses in Ivankov went on
Provision should have been made to change the wheels further toward Kiev by foot. Some hitched rides. A
when they left the 10-km zone. But no one thought about helicopter pilot I knew told me only later what he had
that. The radioactivity of the asphalt in Kiev will have seen from the air: huge crowds of lightly dressed people,
between 10 and 30 millirems per hour for a long time yet, women with children, elderly people, going along the
and the roads will have to be washed for months. road and the shoulders toward Kiev. He had seen them
even in the area of Irpen and Brovary. The vehicles were
Testimony of I.P. Tsechelskaya, operative in the Pripyat stuck in those crowds, just as they would have been in a
concrete-mixing unit: cattle drive. You often see something like that in the
films in Central Asia, and you immediately think of a
"I and others were told that the evacuation would be for comparison, even if a bad one. And the people trudging,
3 days and that we should not take anything. I went off trudging, trudging...."
in just my dressing gown. I only grabbed up my passport
and a little money, which soon ran out. They did not let It was tragic for the travelers to leave behind their
us go back after 3 days. I arrived in Lvov. No money. household pets, dogs and cats. The cats, sticking their
Had I known, I would have taken along my savings book. tails straight up, looked into people's eyes, meowed, dogs
But I left everything. The stamp showing that I was of the most diverse breeds howled, made their way into
registered in Pripyat had no effect on anyone. I asked for the buses, whined heartrendingly, and snarled when they
help. They did not give it. I wrote a letter to Mayorets, were dragged away. But it was not possible to take along
 55
JPRS-UEA-034-89
23 October 1989

the cats and dogs, which the children had become Nesterov and Serebryakov did a thorough reconnais-
particularly accustomed to. Their fur was highly radio- sance from the air, sketched the diagram of the runs on
active, just like people's hair. But then animals spend the the reactor to dump the sand. The approaches to the
whole day outside in the street. How much had they reactor from the air were dangerous, the Unit 4 stack was
collected? in the way, it was about 150 meters high. Nesterov and
Serebryakov measured the radioactivity at various alti-
Dogs deserted by their masters ran behind their respec- tudes over the reactor. They did not drop below 110
tive buses for a long time. But in vain. They stayed meters, since the radioactivity rose sharply. At an alti-
behind and returned to the abandoned city. And they tude of 110 meters, it was 500 roentgens per hour, but
began to get together in packs. after the "bombing" it surely rose even higher. They had
to hover over the reactor for 3 or 4 minutes in order to
Archeologists at one time read an interesting inscription dump the sand. The dose which the pilots received in
on Babylonian clay tablets: "When the dogs form packs that time was between 20 and 80 roentgens, depending
in a city, the city will fall and be destroyed." The city of on the intensity of the radiation background. And how
Pripyat has been left abandoned, mothballed by radia- many flights would there be? They would find out today.
tion for several decades. A ghost city.... It was a combat situation in a nuclear war....
The deafening roar hindered the work of the government
The dogs which had formed into packs first of all commission. They had to speak very loudly, to shout.
gobbled up most of the radioactive cats, then they grew Shcherbina became nervous: "Why not start throwing
wild and snarled at people. They tried to attack people the bags into the reactor along with the sand?" When the
and abandoned livestock.... A group of hunters with helicopters landed and took off, the whirling propellers
rifles was urgently assembled, and in the course of 3 days blew radioactive dust containing fission products from
they shot all the radioactive dogs that had gone wild, the surface of the ground. The radioactivity rose sharply
among them mongrels, mastiffs, sheep dogs, terriers, in the air near the headquarters of the party gorkom and
spaniels, bulldogs, poodles, and lapdogs. The shooting inside the buildings located nearby. People were suffo-
was completed on 29 April, and the corpses of dogs of cating.
different colors were scattered over the streets of aban-
doned Pripyat.... And still the damaged reactor was belching and belching
millions and millions of curies....
Inhabitants of villages and farms close to the power plant
were also subject to evacuation. In particular, Semi- Gen Antoshkin gave up his place on the roof of the
khodov, Kopachey, Shepelichey, and others. Anatoliy "Pripyat" Hotel to Colonel Nesterov so that the latter
Ivanovich Zayats (chief engineer of the trust would guide the flight, and he himself would go up in the
Yuzhatomenergomontazh) went with a group of helpers, air. For a long time, he could not figure out where the
among them hunters with rifles, to make the rounds of reactor was. If you were not familiar with the unit's
the farms and villages and explain that people had to structure, it was difficult to get your bearings. He real-
leave their homes. The state would pay them in full for ized that knowledgeable assembly workers or operating
everything. Everything would be fine. But people did not personnel had to be taken on the "bomb runs."...
understand, they did not want to understand:
The reconnoitering was done, the flight approaches to
"How is this so?...The sun is shining, the grass is green, the reactor were determined. They needed bags, shovels,
everything is flourishing and blossoming. See what gar- sand, and people who would fill the bags and load them
into the helicopters. Gen Antoshkin expounded all this
dens there are...." to Shcherbina. All of them in the party gorkom were
coughing, their throats were dry, they had difficulty
Many inhabitants, having heard that grass must not be
fed to the livestock, drove the cows, sheep, and goats up speaking.
an inclined ramp to the roofs of barns and kept them "You don't have enough people in the military?" Shcher-
there so that they would not go and browse the grass. bina inquired. "You are putting those questions to me?"
They thought this was for a short time. A day or 2, and
then it would be possible again. It had to be explained to "The pilots must not load the sand!" the general parried.
them over and over. They shot the livestock and trans- "They have to fly the planes, man the controls, the run
ported the people to a safe place.... on the reactor must be accurate and guaranteed. Their
hands must not shake. They can't be handling bags and
On the morning of 27 April, the first two MI-6 helicop- shovels!"
ters arrived on Gen Antoshkin's call; they were piloted
by the experienced pilots B. Nesterov and A. Serebrya- "Here, general, take two deputy ministers—Shasharin
kov. The thunder of the helicopter engines when they and Meshkov, let them take care of the loading, provide
landed in the square in front of the CPSU city committee the bags, shovels, and sand.... Here, there is sand piled all
awakened all the members of the government commis- over. The soil is sandy. Find a place nearby that is not
sion, who had not lain down for a few hours' nap until paved, and go to it.... Shasharin, recruit assemblers and
0400 hours. builders at large. Where is Kizima?"
56 JPRS-UEA-034-89
23 October 1989

Testimony of G.A. Shasharin: had built that reactor, and they were needed to tell the
pilots very precisely when to drop the bags.
"Air Force Gen Antoshkin did very good work. A
vigorous and businesslike general, he gave no one any Col Nesterov, a first-class military pilot, made the first
peace and pestered them all. At some 500 meters from helicopter bomb run. At a speed of 140 km/hr, they
the gorkom, near the 'Pripyat' Cafe they found a pile of followed a straight line toward Unit 4. The sighting point
excellent sand near the river terminal. The hydraulic was to go left of the two 150-meter stacks of the nuclear
dredges had built it up for construction of the city's new power plant. They passed over the crater of the nuclear
residential areas. They brought a bundle of bags from the reactor. Altitude 150, no, that was high. One hundred
warehouse of the worker supply division, and we, at first and ten meters. The radiometer showed 500 roentgens
three of us—1, A.G. Meshkov, first deputy minister of per hour. They hovered over the chink formed by the
medium machinebuilding, and Gen Antoshkin—began partly skewed disk of the upper biological shield and the
to fill the bags. We were soon in a sweat. We worked just shaft. A chink that was about 5 meters wide. It had to go
the way we were: Meshkov and I in Moscow suits and in. The upper shield was heated to the color of the sun
street shoes and the general in his dress uniform. All when it looks like a disk in the sky. They opened the
without respirators and dosimeters. door. The heat was carried up from below. A powerful
upward flow of radioactive gas ionized by neutrons and
"I soon involved in this effort Antonshchuk, manager of gamma rays. It was all without respirators. The heli-
the trust Yuzhatomenergomontazh, his chief engineer copter was not shielded with lead on the underside. That
A.I. Zayats, Yu.N. Bypiraylo, administration chief of was thought of later, when hundreds of tons of the load
GEM, and others. Antonshchuk ran up to me with a list had already been dropped. But now.... They stuck their
of benefits which in this situation I considered comical, heads out the open door and looking down into the
but I approved it on the spot. Antonshchuk and those nuclear crater, eyeballing it, they would dump the bag.
who were about to go to work were operating according And that went on the whole time. There was no other
to the old pattern, not understanding that the 'dirty' zone method.
was now everywhere, that benefits would have to be paid
to everyone who lived in the city. I did not intend to The first 27 crews and Antonshchuk, Deygraf, and
distract people with explanations. There was a job to be Tokarenko, who helped them, were soon disabled, and
done. But there were not enough people arriving. I asked they were sent off to Kiev for treatment. Radioactivity at
A.I. Zayats, chief engineer of Yuzhatomenergomontazh, the altitude of 110 meters reached 1,800 roentgens per
to go to nearby kolkhozes and ask for help...." hour after the bags were dumped. The pilots became sick
in the air. After all, the throwing of the bags from such an
altitude proved to cause a considerable shock to the
Testimony of Anatoliy Ivanovich Zayats: glowing core. There was a sharp increase, especially on
"Antonshchuk and I went to the farms on the 'Druzhba' the first day, of the discharge of fission fragments and
Kolkhoz. We went from farm to farm. The people were radioactive ash from the graphite that was consumed.
working in plots around the house. But many were out in People were breathing all ofthat. For a month afterward,
the fields. It was spring, planting time. We began to they were rinsing uranium and plutonium salts out of the
explain that the soil was already unsuitable, that the blood of the heroes by replacing their blood over and
throat of the reactor had to be plugged up, and that we over.
needed help. It had been very hot since morning. People
were in a Sunday, preholiday frame of mind. They had On the days that followed, the pilots themselves thought
trouble believing us. They went on working. Then we about putting lead sheets under their seats and wearing
found the kolkhoz chairman and secretary of the party respirators. This measure somewhat reduced the expo-
organization. They went into the fields with us. We sure of flight personnel.
explained over and over again. Finally, people looked at
us with understanding. Some 150 volunteers gathered— At 1900 hours on 27 April, Maj Gen Antoshkin reported
men and women. After that, they worked loading the to Shcherbina, chairman of the government commission,
bags into the helicopters without stopping. And it was all that 150 tons of sand had been thrown into the crater of
done without respirators or other safety devices. On 27 the reactor. He said it with some pride. Those 150 tons
April, they supported 110 helicopter flights, on 28 April, had not been easy. "Not good, general," Shcherbina said.
300 helicopter flights...." "One hundred and fifty tons of sand for a reactor like
that is like a BB shot to an elephant. We have to pick up
And under the roar of the helicopters Shcherbina was the pace sharply." The general was about to drop from
hurrying and driving everyone mercilessly—ministers, fatigue and sleeplessness, and this assessment of Shcher-
deputy ministers, academy members, marshals, and gen- bina's discouraged him. But only for a moment. He
erals: "They know how to explode a reactor, but no one plunged back into the fight.
knows how to fill bags with sand!"
From 1900 to 2100 hours, he worked out relations with
Finally, they loaded the first lot of six bags of sand onto all the leaders crucial to supplying the helicopter pilots
the MI-6. Antonshchuk, Deygraf, and Tokarenko took with bags, sand, and people to do the loading.... He
turns going on the bomb runs in the helicopters. They figured how to use a parachute to increase productivity.
 57
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They would load the bags into the canopy, shape it into On 29 April, the government commission left Pripyat
a big sack, attach the straps to the helicopter, and off it and went off to Chernobyl.
would go to the reactor....
On 28 April, 300 tons were dumped. And at that time, USSR Minenergo in Moscow had
provided an emergency and large-scale shipment of
29 April—750 tons.
special equipment and materials to Chernobyl through
30 April—1,500 tons. Vyshgorod. They snatched from everywhere and
rerouted to the disaster area cement mixers, concrete
1 May—1,900 tons.... layers, cranes, concrete pumps, concrete-mixing plants,
trailers, trucks, bulldozers, dry concrete mix, and other
At 1900 hours on 1 May, Shcherbina reported the need
building materials....
to cut the dumping in half. The fear had arisen that the
concrete structures which the reactor rested on would I learned about the accident on Monday morning, 28
not hold, and everything would collapse into the bubbler April, from Yevgeniy Aleksandrovich Reshetnikov, chief
pond. That brought the threat of a thermal explosion and of the Main Production Administration for Construction
an immense radioactive discharge.... of USSR Minenergo, when I went to report to him on the
results of my trip to the Crimean Nuclear Power Plant.
In all, about 5,000 tons of loose materials were dumped On the morning of the 29th, Deputy Minister Sadovskiy,
into the reactor between 27 April and 2 May.... according to our information, reported on what had
happened to Dolgikh and Ligachev. Later, we learned
Testimony of G.A. Shasharin: about the fire on the roof of the turbine hall and the
partial collapse of the roof. And only on subsequent days
"On 26 April, I decided to shut down Units 1 and 2. did it finally become clear in the ministry in Moscow
They began the shutdown at approximately 2100 hours that a nuclear disaster had occurred at the Chernobyl
and stopped them somewhere around 0200 hours on 27 Nuclear Power Plant such as had no equal in the nuclear
April. I ordered that 20 supplemental rods be added power industry.
uniformly to the core of each reactor by inserting them in
the empty channels. If there were no empty channels, A continuous duty watch was organized, the traffic of
pull out the fuel assemblies and put the supplemental shipments to Chernobyl was monitored, priority needs
rods in their place. This artificially increased the nega- were met. It turned out that there were no machines with
tive reactivity margin. manipulators to collect radioactive pieces of debris. The
explosion had scattered radioactive graphite and frag-
"At night, Sidorenko, Meshkov, Legasov, and I conjec- ments of fuel over the entire grounds around the unit.
tured about what could have been the cause of the We contracted with a West German firm to purchase
explosion. We were blaming radiolytic hydrogen, but three manipulators for 1 million gold rubles to pick up
then it occurred to me that the explosion had been in the the fuel and graphite on the grounds of the nuclear power
reactor itself. We also hypothesized sabotage. That plant. A team of our engineers headed by N.N. Kon-
explosives had been placed in the central hall next to the stantinov, chief mechanical engineer of Soyuzatomener-
drives of the safety control system and...the reactor had gostroy, went immediately to West Germany for training
set it off. This led on to the idea of a prompt-neutron and for acceptance of the machines. Unfortunately, we
excursion. At that same time, that night, I reported the never managed to put them to use. They worked only on
situation to Dolgikh. He asked me: Could there be level ground, but at Chernobyl there were heaps every-
another explosion? I said no. Even by that time we had where. Then they were lifted to the roof to pick up the
measurements around the reactor—no more than 20 fuel and graphite on the roof of the deaerator galleries,
neutrons per centimeter. Later, it went to 17-18 neu- but there the robots became entangled in the hoses left
trons. As though there were no reaction. To be sure, we behind by the firemen. As a consequence, the fuel and
made the measurements at a distance and through con- graphite had to be gathered up by hand....
crete. We do not know what the true density of neutrons
was. We did not take measurements from the helicop- 4 May 1986
ter.... On Saturday, 4 May, Shcherbina, Mayorets, Maryin,
"That same night, I designated a skeleton crew to attend Semenov, Tsvirko, Drach, and the others arrived from
the first, second, and third units. I drew up the lists, gave Chernobyl. They were met at the Vnukovo Airport by a
them to Bryukhanov. On 29 April, during the conference special bus, which took them all off to Clinic No 6.
in Chernobyl, I proposed that all 14 other units with Tsvirko, who had high blood pressure and hemorrhaging
RBMK-type reactors be shut down. Shcherbina listened in both eyes, contrived to run off to the Kremlin Hos-
in silence, then, after the conference, when people were pital. "Where have you come from?" they asked him
leaving, he said: 'You, Gennadiy, what are you doing, there. "From Chernobyl.... I got irradiated...." "We do
don't start an uproar. Do you realize what it means not know how to treat anything like that...." Then he
leaving the country without 14 million MW of installed went off to Clinic No 6. There they "sniffed" everyone
capacity...?'" with the counter, undressed them, washed them, and
58 JPRS-UEA-034-89
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shaved them. Everything was highly radioactive. Shcher- A.M. Petrosyants, chairman of the USSR State Com-
bina alone did not let them shave him. After washing, he mittee for Use of Atomic Energy, uttered blasphemous
changed into clean clothes and went off home with words justifying the Chernobyl disaster: "Science
radioactive hair. (Shcherbina, Mayorets, and Maryin demands sacrifices."
were processed separately from the others in a medical
unit next door to Clinic No 6.) Marshal Ogankov was setting off shaped charges in the
damaged unit. They attached a charge to the wall of the
Everyone except Shcherbina, who had left the clinic, and VSRO on the Unit 3 side, and they set it off with a
Mayorets, who was quickly washed clean, was left for Bickford fuse. They made a hole in the walls of three
examination and treatment in Clinic No 6, where they rooms. But pipelines and equipment turned out to be
spent from a week to a month. A new government along the route and were in the way of the pipeline. The
commission headed by Silayev, deputy chairman of the hole had to be made much wider. They couldn't
USSR Council of Ministers, flew off to Chernobyl to decide....
replace Shcherbina.
V.T. Kizima proposed another solution: instead of dem-
olition, to cut through with a welding arc from the
Testimony of G.A. Shasharin: transport corridor. That was where Room 009 was. They
"On 4 May, we found a valve which had to be opened in began preparations for the work. To reduce the burning
order to drain the water from the lower part of the of graphite and access of oxygen into the core, they
bubbler basin. There was a little water there. We had connected nitrogen to the receivers and fed it in under
looked into the upper basin through a hole in the spare the members supporting the reactor....
passageway. There was no water there. I supplied two
diver's suits and gave them to the military people. The Radioactivity in Kiev (the air) was about 2,000 doses on
military men went to open the valves. They also used 1 and 2 May. This was reported by an installation worker
mobile pumping stations and hoselines. Silayev, the new who arrived. The data need to be checked.
chairman of the government commission, offered a deal:
in case of death of the person opening it—a car, a dacha, 7 May 1986
an apartment, support of the family for life. Those who
took part were Ignatenko, Saakov, Bronnikov, Grish- A staff headquarters of USSR Minenergo was set up in
chenko, Captain Zborovskiy, Lieutenant Zlobin, the Moscow to provide prompt and long-term help to Cher-
Junior Sergeants Oleynik and Navava...." nobyl. Duty watch until 2200 hours in the office of First
Deputy Minister Sadovskiy.
Testimony of B.Ya. Prushinskiy: Conference in the office of Deputy Minister Semenov.
"On 4 May, I flew in a helicopter to the reactor along Specialists of Glavgidrospetsstroy said it was impossible
with Velikhov, member of the academy. After he had to break into the damaged unit with a directed charge.
carefully examined the destroyed power unit from the The soils of Pripyat are mainly sand, which is not
air, Velikhov said concernedly: 'It is hard to figure out amenable to a directed explosion. Heavy soils are
how to tame the reactor....' required, and they do not exist there. The sand is simply
swept aside in all directions by the explosion. What a
"This was said after 5,000 tons of various materials had pity! Nuclear power plants should be built on heavy soil
been dumped in the nuclear crater...." just in case later they have to be blocked up with earth
and turned into something like a Scythian burial mound.
5 May 1986 The first radio-controlled bulldozers arrived at Cherno-
Chernobyl was evacuated. The 30-km zone was estab- byl: Japanese Kamatsus and our own DT-250's. There
lished. Population and livestock were evacuated. The was a big difference in operating them: ours is started by
staff headquarters of the government commission hand, and controlled by remote; if the engine stalls
retreated to Ivankov. The discharge. The radioactivity of during operation where the radiation is high, a man has
the air had risen sharply. to be sent to start it up again. The Japanese Kamatsu is
started and driven by remote.
Marshal Ogankov and his aides were drilling in the
explosion of shaped charges over in Unit 5. Officers and A traffic dispatcher called from Vyshgorod, where equip-
installation workers were helping. On 6 June, they were ment is being assembled for Chernobyl. He said that an
to set off charges under real conditions in the damaged immense number of machines have been assembled
unit. A hole was needed for the pipeline that would carry already. There are a great many drivers. Unmanageable.
the liquid nitrogen under the foundation slab for cooling. There are difficulties organizing housing and food. They
are drinking everywhere. They are talking in favor of
6 May 1986 decontamination. The radioactivity in Kiev and
Vyshgorod: 0.5 milliroentgen per hour in the air and
Shcherbina's press conference. In his speech, the radia- 15-20 milliroentgens on the surface of roads and the
tion background around the unit and in Pripyat had asphalt. The order: break up the drivers into squads of 10
dropped. Why? and make the most conscientious one the head of each
 59
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squad. Send the incorrigibles back home. In future, take We have prepared the draft of the government decree on
on people on the basis of the need to have an ongoing Chernobyl, entitled "On Measures To Repair the
pool from which to replace those who are disabled, that Damage of the Accident" (supplying equipment, vehi-
is, who take a dose of 25 rems. cles, chemicals for decontamination, benefits for
builders and installers). Minister Mayorets is reporting
There were times at Chernobyl when the radioactivity of today in a meeting of the Politburo.
the air increased sharply. Plutonium, transuraniums,
and others. In these cases, emergency relocation of staff 2000 hours. A decision has been made to apply wet
headquarters and dormitories to a new and more distant concrete to the pile of debris in order to embed the pieces
place. Bed linen and furniture left behind. Everything of fuel and graphite and reduce the radiation back-
furnished from scratch at the new place. When N.I. ground. Sixty welders are urgently needed to assemble
Ryzhkov, chairman of the Council of Ministers, arrived the pipeline. Order of Deputy Minister A.N. Semenov to
in the disaster zone, people specifically complained to P.P. Triandafilidi, chief of Soyuzenergomontazh: Make
him about the bad medical service. The prime minister the people available. Triandafilidi heatedly shouts at
gave Health Minister Petrovsky and his deputies a Semenov: "We will burn up the welders with radiation!
proper dressing down. Who is going to assemble pipelines at the power plants
being built?!" A new order followed from Semenov to
But unfortunately, we did not have in the country the Triandafilidi: Prepare a list of welders and installers and
necessary specialized equipment for combating and send it to the defense ministry for their mobilization.
localizing nuclear disasters like the one at Chernobyl.
Such as the "wall in the ground" machine with sufficient In view of the anticipated rains in the area of the
trench depth, robotic equipment with manipulators, and Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant—an order of the
so on. Deputy Minister A.N. Semenov came back from chairman of the government commission Silayev,
the conference with Marshal Akhromeyev, deputy deputy chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers:
defense minister. He said: the conference was represen- "Urgently undertake to realign the storm drains of the
tative, some 30 colonel generals and lieutenant generals. city of Pripyat so that they empty into the reservoir of
V.K. Pikalov, chief of chemical forces, had been there. the cooling pond. (Previously, they went into the Pripyat
The marshal had given those attending a good dressing River.—G.M.) The entire staff headquarters of the gov-
down. ernment commission is to go to the damaged unit to
organize urgent steps to cover the radioactive pieces of
Telephone call from V.T. Kizima, chief of the construc- graphite and fuel ejected by the explosion...."
tion project in Chernobyl. He is complaining about the
shortage of automobiles. Drivers and vehicles coming When he was signing my travel orders for Chernobyl,
from various places go off on their own with their Deputy Minister Aleksandr Nikolayevich Semenov said:
radioactive vehicles after they have gotten their dose. "Get something definite on the radiation fields. When
The vehicles do not get washed off. The radioactivity we were there, it was obvious that no one knew how
inside goes as high as 3-5 roentgens per hour. He is much radiation there was, and now they are concealing
requesting accumulator dosimeters and optical dosime- it, practicing deception. And in general you will come
ters. The shortage is acute. The dosimeters are being back and tell me. While here I sit with my hair shaved....
stolen. Those who leave carry them away as souvenirs. And my blood pressure shooting up.... Could that be the
The weakest point is organization of the dosimeter radiation...?"
service for builders and installers. Operations are demor-
alized, cannot even support itself... At Bykovo, we waited a long time for the minister. He
The "go ahead" has been obtained through civil defense arrived an hour late accompanied by his aide, whom he
for 2,000 optical dosimeter kits complete with power had brought with him to Minenergo from Minelek-
packs and rechargers from the Kiev depot. I passed the trotekhprom, where he had previously been minister.
whereabouts on to Kizima. Asked him to send a truck.
In addition to me, there were three other deputy chiefs of
The staff headquarters of USSR Minenergo is receiving main administrations of USSR Minenergo on the flight:
telephone calls, and many Soviet citizens are coming in I.S. Popel—deputy chief of Glavsnab, Yu.A. Khiye-
asking to be sent to Chernobyl. Most of them, of course, salu—deputy chief of Glavenergokomplekt, and V.S.
have no idea of the kind of work that awaits them. But Mikhaylov, deputy chief of Soyuzatomenergostroy, a
for some reason irradiation does not disturb anyone. spry fellow with sociable manners, but with very tena-
They say: after all, on the assumption of 25 roentgens.... cious and attentive eyes. He was just like mercury, a
Some say it straight out: they want to make money. They typical choleric type, he could not sit still a minute, he
have learned that five times the regular salary is being would unfailingly come up with some sort of pros and
paid in the zone adjoining the damaged unit.... But most cons and initiatives. Yolo Aynovich Khiyesalu is a calm
are offering their help unselfishly. One soldier from and quiet man, he does not speak unnecessarily, and
Afghanistan who has been discharged said: "Well, so when he speaks, he speaks with a strong Estonian accent.
what if it is dangerous? Afghanistan was no stroll An extremely likable and decent man. Igor Sergeyevich
through the park. I want to help the country." Popel is a vigorous, broad-faced supply expert with a
60 JPRS-UEA-034-89
23 October 1989

cheerful nature. All three were going into a zone with also agitated. I heard his distinct fine voice beside me: "I
high radiation for the first time in their lives. have high blood pressure. I have heard that the rays
make it jump way up...." Kafanov and Yolo Aynovich
The special trip was being taken on a YaK-40 aircraft Khiyesalu were silent. During the entire time of the
chartered by USSR Minenergo that had been specifically flight, the minister's face did not change expression. The
adapted to carry the top brass. The cabin was divided gray absent eyes, with that shade of perplexity, were
into two small sections: a forward one for the higher looking at something in front of him which we could not
brass and the tail section where all the rest were accom- see.
modated. To be sure, subordination had been observed
in the pre-Chernobyl era, but the disaster had abruptly We were approaching Kiev sometime after 1700 hours.
democratized the situation on the special trips. We would land at the Zhulyana Airport. We flew low
over Kiev. The streets were unusually deserted for the
The minister and his aide had disposed themselves
rush hour. Extremely few pedestrians. I had often
opposite one another in armchairs at a small table on the
approached Kiev from this side, but it had never been so
left side in the forward cabin. On the right side, were four
chairs one behind the other which were taken by the devoid of people.
deputy chiefs of the main administrations, the chiefs of
the production departments, and the staff services of At length, we landed. The minister immediately drove
various administrations of the ministry. away in a ZIM. He had been met by Sklyarov, Ukrainian
power minister, who was pale as death, and the obkom
Of all those taking this trip, I was the only one who had secretary. We were met by Maslak, chief of the supply
worked for a long time in operating nuclear power administration of UkSSR Minenergo, a thin, affable, and
plants. Even the minister himself, although he had spent cheerful person with a bald head. Our entire team fitted
the first nuclear week in Pripyat and Chernobyl, had into the blue "rafik."
been irradiated and was now sitting there with all his
hair shaved off, did not fully grasp what had happened Maslak said that the radioactivity in the air of Kiev,
and was not capable of independently solving the inter- according to the radio, was 0.4 milliroentgen per hour,
related problems that arose without the help of special- which is considerably higher on the asphalt, but they did
ists. Plump and well-groomed, he sat there in silence, not report that. He had heard 100 times more, but he did
and not once spoke to any of his subordinates in the not know what it meant, since he had never had dealings
cabin. A barely detectable smile glimmered on his face. I with the atom before in his life. He said that about a
examined him unobtrusively, and it seemed to me that million people had left Kiev during the week. During the
he had been affected by what happened, by this nuclear first days, the scene was incredible at the station, more
disaster that had suddenly come crashing down on him. people than for the evacuation during the war. Specula-
It was as though written on his face: "Why did I get into tors hiked up the price of tickets to 200 rubles in spite of
this branch of power engineering alien to me, why did I the additional trains allocated to those leaving. There
heap on my shoulders the construction and operation of was hand-to-hand combat in boarding the cars, and
nuclear power plants? Why did I leave my cherished when they left there were people on the roof and the
electric motors and transformers? Why...?" He was platforms. But the panic lasted no more than 3 or 4 days.
clearly dumbstruck by this nuclear mess that had fallen Now you could freely leave Kiev.
into his lap. Dumbstruck, but not frightened. He could
not be frightened, for he did not understand that a "But what is this—all of 0.34 of milliroentgen per hour?!
nuclear disaster was dangerous. Moreover, he did not I don't like it!" The impatient V.S. Mikhaylov turned to
agree that a disaster had occurred. Simply an accident.... me with his little graying Kurchatov beard.
Some minor damage....
He said that an ordinary mortal could take 1.3 mil-
Kafanov, deputy chief of Soyuzgidrospetsstroy, was also liroentgens per day. That is the dose stipulated by the
on the flight with us: a tall men who looked gloomy and standard of the WHO (World Health Organization). At
had a puffy face. He gave the appearance of Olympic that point, that is, on 8 May, in Kiev, if one was to
calm, but it was also the first time that he would be believe the official figures, the radiation exceeded the
coming up against radiation. WHO standard sixfold. And on the asphalt, to believe
Below, we could already see the overflowing Dnieper. It Maslak, it was 300 times greater.
was good that the rains had ended, had the disaster
occurred a month before, all the radioactivity would The "rafik" drove through half-empty streets. The time
have ended up in the Pripyat and Dnieper.... was 1900 hours.

Mikhaylov was making rustling sounds behind me. He "They say," Maslak said, "that the radioactivity in Kiev
was disturbed by the uncertain future, he wanted to clear went as high as 100 milliroentgens per hour in the first
up everything in advance and asked me in a whisper, days after the explosion."
evidently not wanting the minister to hear: "Tell me,
how much can one take to be, well...without conse- "Two thousand doses compared to the standard for
quences...? You know, with no aftereffects...?" Popel was ordinary mortals," I explained.
 61
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23 October 1989

"Well, you know!" the expansive Mikhaylov exclaimed. "It is burning today—2,000 doses of plutonium, it is
"Maslak! Where are your dosimeters? You are the supply stifling." He frowned, coughed, wiped his wrinkled face
administration, give us dosimeters!" with his cap.
We also began to look in that direction. The sky was
"You will get dosimeters in Ivankov." sinister and silent. We all looked and looked in that
direction with the feeling one might have if the war, the
"Stop, stop!" Mikhaylov started repeating to the driver. front, was over there.
"Right here by the store. We have to get something to
drink for decontamination." "And I have the itch," another one said, "my whole body
itches, allergy.... Especially my ankles."
The driver smiled, but he had no intention of stopping.
In the last 10 days, he had seen that he had not died, that Pulling up the trousers legs of the coveralls and bending
one could go on living. over, he began a frenzied scratching of his legs, which
were purple and swollen.
We drove outside the Kiev city limits. I looked at a pine
tree by the side of the road that was as tall as a ship mast, Maslak came back.
knowing that the radioactive filth was also here now, "No safety clothing, no dosimeters, nowhere to spend
although externally everything seemed so clean and the night. We will go to Kiev. We cannot go to Chernobyl
orderly. And noticeably fewer people, and the people like this, they will turn us back. Those first days, they
seemed somehow solitary. And very few vehicles coming say, no telling how people were dressed...."
to meet us from the direction of Chernobyl.... We passed
by Petrivtsy, Dymer. Dachas, settlements by the road- Nothing else could be done, we sat in the "rafik" and
side. Rare pedestrians. Children with satchels were going went back to Kiev. At the Kiyevenergo Hotel, an enor-
home from school after the second shift, and they were mous bag containing blue cotton safety clothing, safety
all like any others, but somehow different.... As though shoes, and black woolen berets. It was not good for the
everything had slowed down. Thinned out and slowed berets to be made of wool. Wool is an excellent absorber
down. of radioactivity. They should be cotton, but there were
no cotton ones. You take what you can get.
What I have been describing in these last sections (the
events of 26 and 27 April) I put together later, after In the morning, a blue summer sky, the temperature was
visiting Chernobyl and Pripyat, after a meticulous ques- 25° C. We drove out again in the "rafik." As we were
tioning of many people, Bryukhanov, shop and shift leaving Vyshgorod, at the State Vehicle Inspection Sta-
chiefs in the nuclear power plant, participants in the tion there was a dosimetrist. He was stopping the rare
tragic events. I was aided in understanding and recon- vehicles from Chernobyl and "sniffing" the wheels with
structing the entire course of events by the many years of counters. By the side of the road was a blue Zhiguli with
experience I had had working in the operation of nuclear the doors and trunk wide open. Inside, bundles of things,
power plants and by having been irradiated and carpets. The owners, a man and a woman, were standing
spending time in the hospital of Clinic No 6 in Moscow alongside. "But what is this?!" the woman lamented.
in the seventies. At that time, no one knew the whole "But don't take our property...."
picture, each of the eyewitnesses or participants in the
events knew only his small little piece of the tragedy.... "The air is bad today." The driver pulled over his nose
the antidust breathing mask that was hanging around his
The "rafik" sped along the broad and utterly empty neck. It burned when you breathed, and the burning of
limited-access highway between Kiev and Chernobyl, the eyelids was getting stronger and stronger. Following
which even 10 days before had been very lively and the driver's example, they all put on their breathing
brilliant with the headlights of cars. I would have to masks, but I was ashamed for some reason. Ashamed to
make my way through to the Chernobyl staff headquar- give in to the radiation, damn it to hell! There was
ters today, I thought, arrive for the evening session of the drifted dust ahead on the asphalt. The Volga in which the
staff headquarters of the government commission. But minister was riding passed us, a cloud of dust with
the "rafik" did not enter the yard of the Ivankov power radioactivity of about 30 roentgens per hour enveloped
system until 2100 hours. We got out and stretched our the "rafik." I put on my breathing mask. The minister's
legs. We had a quick snack in the wooden barracks, right Volga disappeared around the bend. Again, we were the
there in the yard. There was a small dining room for the only ones on the road. Now and then we would pass a
power system's operating personnel. Three workers who ponderous cement truck crawling along with a load of
had recently come from Chernobyl were carrying on an dry concrete mix. And then again, quiet and empty. Not
excited conversation not far away in the yard. One was in a soul in the broad expanses of fields or in the villages
white, two in blue cotton coveralls, with dosimeters in and on the farms. The greenery was still fresh. But soon,
their breast pockets. The one in white, tall and bald, was I knew this from experience, it would begin to darken
pointing with the cap he had torn from his head to the and turn black and shrivel, and the needles of the firs and
northwest, high in what was now the evening sky, which pines would turn rust-colored. The shoots of winter
was overcast with a dirty haze: crops, which had built up their strength, would begin to
62 JPRS-UEA-034-89
23 October 1989

droop, and, like sheep's wool, what might be called the month or 2 they would accumulate so much radioac-
earth's hair, would collect radiation. Two or three times tivity that inside it would be between 5 and more
as much would accumulate there as on the surface of the roentgens per hour.
roads.
I went along the corridor on the first floor. Sheets and
Popel complained of headache. scraps of paper were stuck up on the doors with drawing
pins, reading: "IAE" (Atomic Energy Institute), "Gidro-
"The blood pressure has climbed up," he concluded. "I proyekt," "Minugleprom," "Mintransstroy," "NIKIET"
went through the war, survived so much.... When we get (the reactor's main designer), "Academy of Sciences,"
there, I will 'immediately ask Sadovskiy whether I am and many others. I looked into the room saying "IAE."
needed here? After all, I could do more in Moscow than Two desks close to one another by the window, at the left
in Chernobyl, 1,000 times more.... And 100 times one Yevgeniy Pavlovich Velikhov, at the one on the right
faster." Minister Mayorets in the same blue cotton coveralls I
was wearing and the woolen beret on his head that had
Mikhaylov, Razumnyy, and Kafanov were constantly been shorn with clippers. Alongside them in chairs were
looking into the eyepieces of their dosimeters. Sidorenko, deputy chairman of Gosatomenergonadzor
and corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences,
"But my arrow has gone all the way over to minus, to the Legasov, member of the academy, Deputy Minister
left of zero," Razumnyy said. "Some quality, slipshod Shasharin, and Ignatenko, deputy chief of Soyuzatomen-
work everywhere!" ergo.
"That's because you are not absorbing any yet, you are Mayorets was pressing Velikhov, member of the
giving off roentgens," Filonov joked. "You're giving off academy:
more than you're taking in."
"Yevgeniy Pavlovich! Someone has to take organiza-
"And mine stands exactly at zero," Mikhaylov tional leadership into his hands. There are dozens of
announced. "But my eyes burn, and the itch is beginning ministries here, Minenergo is unable to bring them all
in my legs." He scratched his ankles frantically. together...."
"But the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant is your plant,"
"That's a case of fright you've got, Valentin Velikhov parried, "you in fact must bring them
Sergeyevich," Razumnyy said. together." Velikhov was pale, in a checked shirt, which
Not a soul around. No birds visible, but no, there far was unbuttoned and showed his hairy stomach. A
away was a raven flying lazily and not very high. It would fatigued appearance, he had already taken about 50
be interesting to measure its radioactivity. How much roentgens. "Anyway, Anatoliy Ivanovich, we have to
radium would it have accumulated in its feathers? And realize what has happened. The Chernobyl explosion is
then after a few kilometers another living creature. A worse than Hiroshima. That was one bomb, but tenfold
piebald foal came running down toward us on the more radioactive substances have been discharged here.
shoulder of the road from the direction of Chernobyl, And half a ton of plutonium as well. Today, Anatoliy
whipping up the radioactive dust. It was confused, Ivanovich, we have to count people, count lives...."
lonely, turning its head this way and that way, looking I later learned that in those days the phrase "count lives"
for its mother, neighing mournfully. They had already took on a new meaning: In the evening and morning
been shooting all the livestock in these parts. It had sessions of the government commission, when a partic-
remained miraculously intact. Run, get out of here, little ular task of one kind or another came up, collecting fuel
one. Though its hide would also be very radioactive, but and reactor graphite around the unit, going into the high
still run, get out of here. Perhaps it will be lucky.... radiation zone and opening or closing some valve—the
chairman of the government commission would say:
We were quite close to Chernobyl. To the right and left "We have to stake two or three lives on this.... And on
were military camps, tent cities, soldiers, a lot of equip- this, one life." This was uttered simply, as an everyday
ment: armored personnel carriers, bulldozers, engi- matter.
neering machines for removing obstacles (IMR's for
short) with mechanical hands (manipulators) and bull- The people directing recovery from the Chernobyl acci-
dozer blades mounted on them. They were like tanks dent would, of course, make mistakes, but you cannot
except they did not have the gun turrets. And then more deny them personal courage.
tent cities. Soldiers, soldiers, and more soldiers.
I left the office. I was in a hurry to find Bryukhanov as
We were approaching the raykom. Here again, there fast as possible.... What I had cautioned about 15 years
were a great many machines. Mainly automobiles of ago in Pripyat had happened. It already seemed that I
various models, buses, "Cubans," "rafiks," armored was almost right: the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant
personnel carriers, allotted to the members of the gov- was the best in the system of USSR Minenergo, it
ernment commission. All these automobiles and other generated kilowatts over and above the plan, small
machines would have to be buried after a time: in a accidents were hidden, it was on the Honor Roll, it won
JPRS-UEA-034-89 63
23 October 1989

challenge banners. Medals, medals, glory...the explo- a man who had achieved the height of recognition. And
sion.... I was choking with anger. again...and again.... It was an authoritative face....

In the short corridor which was half in the dark, there "You reported to Kiev on 26 April that the radiation
was a small and frail man in white cotton coveralls situation was within the limits of the standard?"
without a cap leaning against the wall: gray curly hair,
powder-pale wrinkled face, expression of confusion and "Yes.... That is what the instruments indicated.... What
depression. His eyes were red, poisoned.... I walked past is more, that was a state of shock."
him, and suddenly it struck me: "Bryukhanov!" I turned:
I took my notebook to make an entry, but he stopped me.
"Viktor Petrovich?!"
"Everything here is very dirty. Millions of particles on
"One and the same," said the man against the wall in the the desk. Don't dirty your hands and the notebook...."
familiar flat voice.
Mayorets looked in, and Bryukhanov, evidently out of
The first feeling that arose in me when I recognized him habit, jumped up readily, forgetting about me, and went
was a feeling of pity and sympathy. I do not know where up to him.
my anger and fury disappeared to. The man standing in
front of me was pitiful and crushed. For a long time, we A man I didn't know introduced himself to me, again a
looked silently into each other's eyes. man with a powder- pale face (under the effect of
radiation doses up to 100 roentgens, there are spasms of
"So that's how it is," he finally said and looked away. the outer capillaries of the skin, and the impression is
given that the face has been powdered). He proved to be
Strange to say, at that moment I was ashamed to have a section chief in the power plant. He said with a bitter
been right. Better that I had not been right. smile:
"You are looking bad," I said, somehow absurdly. That's "If it had not been for the experiment with the spinning
right, absurdly. For it was actually through the efforts of of the generator, everything would have been as
this man that hundreds and thousands of people had before...."
become irradiated. Nevertheless, I could not speak to
him otherwise. "How many roentgens have you taken?" "How much have you taken?"
"A hundred, a hundred and fifty," the man standing by "About 100 roentgens. A hundred and fifty roentgens
the wall in the semidarkness replied in that flat, hoarse were radiated from the thyroid gland in the first days. It
voice that was so familiar. has already dropped off now.... Iodine-131. There was no
point not letting people take the things they needed.
"Where is your family?" Many are suffering very much now. They could have
"I do not know. In Polyesk, it seems.... I do not know.... been put in polyethylene bags...." And he suddenly said:
I am hanging around like a dermo around an icehole. "I remember you, you worked with us as deputy chief
There is no one here who needs me...." engineer in Unit 1."

"And where is Fomin?" "And there is something that I have forgotten.... Where
are your people now, the operating personnel?"
"He has gone off his head.... They let him go off to rest...
To Poltava...." "On the second floor, in the conference room and in the
neighboring room."
"What is your assessment of the situation here now?"
I went up to the second floor. Outside there is a great
"All Indians and no chiefs." deal of radiation in the air, I thought, why don't they
shield the windows with lead? Along the corridor, mainly
"I was told that you asked Shcherbina for permission to doors to the offices of ministers and members of the
evacuate Pripyat on the morning of 26 April. Is that academy. But here was a door with no sign. I opened it
right?" and looked in. An oblong room, the windows half-
"Yes.... But they told me: do not start a panic... That shuttered. A gray-haired man was sitting at a desk. I
was the most terrible and horrible night for me...." recognized Silayev, deputy chairman of the USSR
Council of Ministers. In the past, he had been minister of
"For everyone," I said. "Why are we standing here? Let's the aviation industry. He had replaced Shcherbina here
go into some empty room." on 4 May. The deputy chairman looked at me in silence.
The eyes glittered authoritatively. He remained silent, he
Again our eyes met. There was nothing to say. Every- was waiting for me to speak.
thing was clear as it was. For some reason, I recalled
seeing him on television, at the congress the camera had "The windows need to be screened with lead sheet," I
sought out his face in the hall several times. The face of said, without saying who I was.
64 JPRS-UEA-034-89
23 October 1989

He remained silent, but little by little his face took on a "Well, everywhere. In Pripyat, in Chernobyl, and in the
fierce expression. I closed the door and went off to the 30-km zone...."
conference room....
"Why these, instead of Türkin bladders?" (The Türkin
I should mention that it was considerably later, on 2 bladder is a plastic harmonica with a valve through
June, under Voronin, deputy chairman of the USSR which the portion of air or gas for the test is drawn in
Council of Ministers, who replaced Silayev, when the when it is stretched.)
reactor spit out its next lot of nuclear filth from beneath
the bags of sand and boron carbide that had been The operator laughed:
dumped on it. "Where are you going to get Türkin bladders? And we
The operations people were sitting on the stage of the have a pile of these...."
conference room at the presidium's table and they had "How do you inflate them? With a pump?"
several telephones with which they were maintaining
ongoing communication with the nuclear power plant's "In some places with a pump, in some places by mouth.
underground shelter and the control rooms of the first You can't find bicycle pumps either. The shortage is
three units. All those sitting in the seats of the presidium terrible under present conditions."
had guilty faces, there was not the former military
bearing and confidence of nuclear plant operators typical "If it is inflated by mouth, the reading will be inaccu-
of the times of success and glory. rate," I said. "When I inhale, half of the radioactive
substances remain in the lungs. The lungs operate like a
People were sitting in small groups on chairs in the hall. filter. There is an accumulation of radioactive filth in the
By the window, 1 saw an old friend, chief of the chemical lungs with every breath that is inhaled and exhaled."
shop Yu.F. Semenov; he was discussing something with
a man in safety clothing whom I did not know. I had "But what is to be done?" the operator laughed. "We
hired Semenov back in 1972; at that time, he had a great have not been paying attention to such trifles."
longing to come to the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant.
He was an intelligent specialist, he had worked for many In the former office of the first secretary, familiar and
years on the specialized treatment of radioactive water. unfamiliar people in cotton coveralls, Bryukhanov was
sitting without taking part at the end of the table. On the
"Hello, old man!" I interrupted his conversation. table were photographs of the damaged reactor taken
from a helicopter and a general plan of the industrial
"Ohhh! I am glad to see you. But you see in what times area.
you have come...."
Bryukhanov poked his finger at one of the photographs:
"So, here I am...."
"This is the holding tank for the spent fuel. Packed full of
Semenov, also powder-pale, had aged greatly in the last fuel assemblies. At this point, there is absolutely no
several years. The tar-black sideburns had become quite water in the tank, it evaporated. The assembly will
white. About 2 years before, he had applied for a pension rupture from the residual heat given off..."
on the first list, he intended to leave the shop.
"You are not thinking of taking them out of there?"
"You already intended to leave for clean work?" Ignatenko said. "We will bury them along with the
"Well, yes.... I did intend to, but I lingered on. But where reactor...."
to go now.... Now I am needed here." A tall, elderly general came in in his dress uniform.
"Where are your wife and daughter?" "Who will give me some information, comrades? I
"They were unable to take things with them. Everything command a group of Army dosimetrists. I have been
that had been acquired, it is all gone to ruin. And the absolutely unable to make contact either with the
dacha and the car. I had just bought a new one.... In my builders or with the operating personnel, we have to have
apartment, I drove over there yesterday, 1 roentgen per some coordination."
hour on everything. How to go away with this? The first
They advised him to find Kaplun, he was the chief of the
residential district, it took most of all from the radioac-
dosimetry service at the power plant.
tive cloud."
By the window was an enormous bag of soccer ball I had my own worry: I needed a car to drive to Pripyat
bladders which were whitish with talc. Why so many of and to the unit. Ignatenko refused: he said ask Kizima. I
went down to the dispatcher station on the first floor.
them? V.l. Pavlov, deputy chief of Glavtekhstroy of USSR
"We are taking air samples," one of the operators Minenergo, was on duty at the telephone.
explained.
"Do you have a car?" I asked. "To get over to Kizima's
"Where?" staff headquarters."
JPRS-UEA-034-89 65
23 October 1989

"No, unfortunately. Everyone here has his own wheel- "How much have I had?"
barrow. A thousand bosses, there is no making head nor
tail of it. Sadovskiy went off somewhere in his "I said don't go there anymore," the dosimetrist said and
Zhiguli...." walked away. I asked him to measure the radioactivity of
the bouquet of flowers.
"OK, I will go on foot. Good-bye."
"Twenty roentgens per hour. Get rid of them...."
Vapor is rising from the asphalt, which has been washed
with desorbing solutions. A nauseatingly sweet odor. I I threw the bouquet in the backyard toward the radioac-
walk along the street, which is going upward. It is quiet. tive machines.
Even the leaves are somehow muted, as though they have
been slowed down. Still not dead, but unnatural, like Several people came out of Kizima's office. Excited.
leaves covered with wax, preserved, and they have Kizima was alone, he was uncorking a bottle of mango
stopped moving and are being listened to, sniffed at for juice. On his cheeks were gossamer from the fibers of
ionizing gas. The air after all is radiating about 20 Petryanov cloth used in the breathing masks.
milliroentgens per hour.... But the trees are still alive,
they still find in that plasma something of their own "Greetings, Vasiliy Trofimovich!"
which they need for life. Both the cherries and the apples
are in full bloom. In some places, the fruit has even set. "Ah, greetings to the Muscovites!" he responded joy-
But all of it, both the blooms and the tiny fruit, are now lessly. He nodded toward the bottle: "The whole range of
accumulating radioactivity. vitamins. It helps against radiation." He drank greedily,
his Adam's apple twitching convulsively.
A girl of about 20 in white cotton coveralls is breaking
off branches of the flowering cherry near the wattle fence The telephone rang. Kizima took the receiver.
of an abandoned yard. She plunged her face into the
bouquet. "Yes! Kizima.... I am listening, Anatoliy Ivanovich....
The minister," he whispered to me, covering the mouth-
"Young lady, the flowers are 'dirty.'" piece with his hand. "Yes, yes, I hear you. Take a pencil
and paper? Yes, I have. I am drawing a line at 45°, so....
"Oh, go on," she waved her hand and again started to Now, a vertical line.... Yes.... Now, a horizontal line.... I
break the branches. have done it. You get a right triangle. Is that all?" He
I also broke several branches covered with white blos- listened for a time and then put down the receiver. "So,
soms. I set off with the bouquet for Kizima. you understand, I am working here as the job superin-
tendent. Minister Mayorets works as the senior job
Kizima's staff headquarters was in the former building superintendent, and Comrade Silayev, deputy chairman
of the vocational and technical school. Full of people. of the USSR Council of Ministers, works as the chief of
They were standing and sitting in little groups, walking the construction project. An utter mess. So, if you please,
here and there on business or idly. The vehicles coming a call from the minister. He gave me a drawing over the
and going raised clouds of dust which did not have long telephone. A triangle...." Kizima showed me the sheet of
to settle. Most people's breathing masks were hanging paper. "This is the pile of debris alongside the unit. He
around their necks. Some pulled them over their nose said to pump the concrete onto it. As though I am a
when the dust was raised. About 30 meters from the first-grader and know nothing. And I walked over that
vocational and technical school, in the backyard, were pile of debris on foot the morning of 26 April. And
radioactive concrete trucks, concrete mixers, and dump several times since then. And now just arrived from
trucks which had broken down. There was a dense linden there.... And so, he tells me, you understand, to draw a
tree near the porch of the vocational and technical triangle. So, I drew it, and what then? To be truthful, I
school. No birds could be heard. A large blue fly was have no use for them—neither the ministers nor the
buzzing persistently in the rays of the rather hot sun. All deputy chairmen. This is a construction project, there is
the life had not disappeared. There were flies. And not the radiation hazard, but it is a construction project. I
only large blue flies, but also ordinary houseflies. Many am the chief of the construction project. All I need is
flies inside the building. From the odor striking my Velikhov as scientific adviser, the military people can
noise, it was clear that the toilets here were not working organize the commandant's office and keep order. And
well. At the entrance, a dosimetrist measured the activity people, of course. The people have scattered. I am
of the special clothing worn by a worker of short stature thinking of the regular staff of the construction project.
in coveralls that were the safety color. The worker's face And also the supervisory personnel. More than 3,000 of
was reddish brown (the nuclear sunburn), he was excited. them went off without documents and severance pay.
One dosimeter for 25 people, and that one doesn't work.
"Where have you been?" the dosimetrist asked, applying But even one that doesn't work has a magic effect.
the counter to the thyroid gland. People believe in that hunk of iron. And without it they
"In the ruins.... Also in the transport corridor...." will not go where there is radiation. Here, you have a
dosimeter.... Give it to me. I will use it to send out
"Don't go there again.... You have had enough." another 25 men."
66 JPRS-UEA-034-89
23 October 1989

"I will give it to you when I come back from Pripyat," I you for an hour or 2." Kizima told me the license plate
promised Kizima. number. "The driver's name is Volodya."
The job superintendent came in. "He's not timid, is he?"
"Vasiliy Trofimovich, I need drivers for replacements. "He's a fighting lad. Not long out of the Army."
We are burning up people. This shift has already taken
the quota. Almost all of them have 25 rems or more. The Volodya fortunately had a special pass to Pripyat. In 10
people don't feel good." minutes, we had already jumped over to the limited-
access highway and were going in the direction of the
"But what about Yakovenko?" I asked. "Three days ago Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. I had driven this road
his dispatcher telephoned Moscow to complain that the hundreds of times in the seventies and later, when I was
trust could not handle the drivers sent there, that they already working in Moscow. An 1,800-km ribbon of
were idle, that they drank vodka, that there was nowhere asphalt running from Chernobyl to Pripyat framed with
to put them up, nothing to feed them...." meter-wide stripes of pink concrete. These were protec-
tive strips so as to keep the asphalt from crumbling off
"But what lies he tells! I am hurting for people!" the sides. We were happy at the time to be the only ones
to have such a road and that it would cost less to repair
"My chest burns, I have a cough, my head aches," the roadway. But now....
Kizima complained.
"What if the engine stalls near Unit 4?" Volodya asked
"Why don't you use lead to shield the windows and truck mischievously. "It happened to us once, though not near
cabs? That would reduce the radiation." the unit, but in Pripyat.... Less radiation there...."
"Lead is no good," Kizima said convincingly, 'It "If it shuts off, you will start it," I said. "In what
frightens people and holds up the work." specialty did you serve?"
We talked to Moscow. They were to urgently send "I drove the regimental commander in a VAZ-469. Here
drivers to replace those who had been irradiated. Yak- is a dosimetry station. Soldiers from the chemical forces,
ovenko said that 25 men would arrive at Chernobyl the
next morning as a replacement. The job superintendent you see."
went away encouraged. And immediately there was a On the side of the road stood a large green tank truck
knock at the door. A young major general and three other with attachments mounted on it: pumps, instruments,
officers with him—a colonel and two lieutenant colonels. hoses. A Moskvich came up from the direction of
Pripyat, they stopped it and used a counter to measure
"The podrazdeleniye has arrived to guard the cooling the radioactivity of the wheels, the underside, and the
pond. So that there is no sabotage: they might blow up roof. They asked the passengers and driver to get out.
the dam, and all the dirty water would go into the Pripyat They began to wash the car with desorbing solutions.
and Dnieper.... I am setting up sentry posts along the The soldiers were wearing breathing masks and cloth
entire perimeter of the dam, but we need shelters to hoods that fitted tightly over the head and ears and
protect the sentries from irradiation." extended down over the shoulders. One of the soldiers
"I suggest splash blocks," Kizima said. "We have these with a radiometer on his chest and a long stick-counter
reinforced-concrete splash blocks. Set them upright at an waved to us. We stopped. He checked the special pass,
angle and you have a sentry box. Shall I issue the order?" which Volodya had pasted to the windshield. Everything
in order. He used the counter to sniff our Niva—
A telephone call. Kizima took up the receiver. background.
"Yes.... Yes.... And what does Velikhov say? He is "You can go, but mind—you are going to get the car
thinking...? Let him think. For the present, stop feeding dirty there. The background on the Moskvich is 3
the concrete onto the pile." He put down the receiver. roentgens per hour. And it does not wash off. You don't
"Geysers are starting to shoot up from the wet concrete. care about the car?"
When the liquid falls on the fuel in the pile, there is
either an atomic excursion or simply a disruption of heat "We have a radiometer," I showed the instrument, "we
exchange and a rise of temperature. The radiation situ- will be cautious."
ation deteriorates sharply."
The soldier looked at me with his perceptive blue eyes:
"Vasiliy Trofimovich," I said, "I need to run over to the you won't fool me, old guy, he was thinking, and,
damaged unit. Can you give me a car for an hour or 2?" slamming the door with force, he waved us through.

"We are in a bad way for cars.... OK. One of the chiefs Volodya gave it the gas. The Niva flew along with a
here has gone off to Kiev for the day. Take his Niva. It whine. I lowered the window and stuck out the counter.
has four-wheel drive, could come in handy. Pick up a It would be interesting to know how the radioactivity
radiometer from the dosimetrists. They will lend it to increases as we approach Pripyat.
JPRS-UEA-034-89 67
23 October 1989

To the right and ahead, behind the radioactive foliage radioactive bloom. When I was here, it did not reach the
that was receding into the distance, there was a good second floor, and now it is almost up to the fourth."
view of the complex of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Empty. The blinds tightly drawn on the windows. One
Plant, which was snow-white in the rays of the May could sense that there was no life behind those blinds;
sunshine, and of the fine lacework of the towers of the they were somehow depressing, motionless. Outside on
330- and 750-kv ORU [unified switching facility]. I
the balcony there were bicycles, various boxes, an old
already knew that the explosion had thrown chunks of refrigerator, skis with red ski poles. Everything empty,
fuel onto the site of the ORU-750 and that there was
plenty of siphoning from there.... silent, and dead.
The corpse of an immense black mastiff with white spots
Against the background of all that splendid whiteness
lay crossways on the narrow concrete drive of the inner
and laciness, the terrible black wreck of the fourth
power-generating unit made my heart ache. court.
"Stop, I want to measure how much the coat has accu-
At first, the dial of the radiometer showed 100 mil-
liroentgens per hour; and then it confidently climbed mulated."
rightward—200, 300, 500.... And suddenly it jumped off Volodya went off onto a flowerbed with the left wheels
scale. I switched ranges. Twenty roentgens per hour. and stopped. The new shoots of flowers had been dark-
What from? Most likely the roentgen breeze from the ened by the radiation, and the flowers were withered.
damaged unit. After a few kilometers, the arrow of the The radioactivity of the soil and the concrete of the drive
radiometer fell back again, this time to 700 milliroent- was 60 roentgens per hour.
gens per hour.
"Look, look!" Volodya shouted, pointing with his hand.
In the distance was the clearly distinguishable and long-
familiar road sign saying "Chernobyl Nuclear Power Two large emaciated pigs were running in our direction
Plant imeni Lenin," with the concrete torch. Beyond on the narrow little lane from the school along the wall of
that, the concrete marker: "Pripyat, 1970." a long five-story building. They came running up to the
car, squealing, crazily touching the wheels and the radi-
"Let's go first to Pripyat, Volodya." ator with their snouts. They were looking at us with
Volodya turned left, sped up, and we soon were on the poisoned red eyes, they raised their snouts toward us,
overpass. The city was open before our eyes, white as just as though begging something. Their movements
were somehow out of synch, uncoordinated. They were
snow in the rays of the sun. On the overpass, the pointer
of the radiometer again shot off to the right. I started to swaying. I poked the counter toward the flank of the
hog—50 roentgens per hour. The hog tried to seize the
switch ranges. counter in his teeth, but I managed to pull it away. Then
"Scram through this place. The cloud of the explosion the hungry radioactive pigs started to devour the mastiff.
passed here. Fallout here.... Faster...." It was rather easy for them to tear large hunks from the
flank of the corpse, which was already decomposing,
We sped over the hump of the overpass at high speed and pulling the corpse apart and dragging it here and there
flew headlong into the dead city that was spread out in over the concrete. A swarm of agitated blue flies rose up
front of us. The first thing that struck the eyes, and it was from where the eyes had been and the parted jaws.
a painful blow: the corpses of cats and dogs every-
where—on the roads, in the yards, in the squares, white, "Let's go back, Volodya. Across the overpass to the
red, black, and spotted corpses of the animals that had damaged unit."
been shot. Ominous traces of the abandonment and
irreversibility of the misfortune.... "And if the engine stops?"

"Drive along Lenin Street," I asked Volodya. "If it stops, you will start it. Let's go."

I still remember the number of the house where I lived After he had taxied onto Lenin Street, he asked:
when I worked here, No 9. The city looked strange. As in "Shall we drive on the wrong side of the street? Or how?
the very early morning. Everyone sleeping a deep Our side is over there. Go around the square?"
unbroken sleep. Pots and pans and laundry on the
balconies. Glints of the sun in the windows, resembling "No point."
walleyes, and then a window that happened to be left
open, and, like a dead language, a curtain flapping "It somehow doesn't feel right. As though I am breaking
outside, fading flowers on the window sills.... the traffic laws." Volodya smiled sadly, and we tore
along up the wrong side of the street past the corpses of
"Stop, Volodya, go right here. Slow down...." The dogs and cats toward the damaged power-generating
pointer of the radiometer crept back and forth between 1 unit.
roentgen and 700 milliroentgens per hour. "Drive
slowly," I asked. "This is my house.... I lived here on the We leaped over the overpass at top speed. Again, the
second floor. My, how the rowan has grown. All in pointer of the radiometer shot up several ranges and
68 JPRS-UEA-034-89
23 October 1989

again dropped off. Off to the right, we could see the reactor at more than one place. They had already cut two
horrible picture of the damaged unit. The entire ruins tunnels. Then the coal miners would take over from
and pile of debris were the color of black charred them.
remains. Thready streams of ascending gas ionized by
the radiation streamed upward over the floor of the "They are digging under the concrete raft," Volodya
former central hall where the reactor was. The drum said. "They say that under the reactor a bottle of vodka
separators, dislodged from their footings and displaced costs 150 rubles.... For decontamination...."
to the side, glittered with incongruous newness and "Let's go!" I commanded Volodya. "Outside, you see,
ominousness in those ruins and the blackness. the road up there, along the intake canal. Turn left on it."
It was about 400 meters to the unit. Volodya maneuvered onto the road. We passed the
ORU-750. The pointer of the radiometer jumped up to
"Engage the front axle," I told Volodya. "The increased 400 roentgens per hour. That was clear—the explosion
traction could come in handy." had hurled fuel here. After about 200 meters, opposite
the ORU-330, the pointer fell back to 40. And sud-
What was this? Inside the fence, soldiers were walking denly.... Damn! The unexpected. The road was blocked,
alongside the damaged block and right up to the pile of obstructed with concrete blocks. There was no getting
debris, gathering something. through. And the roentgens were ticking off like a clock.
To the left of the asphalt was the railroad.
"Turn right. Right here...go on.... Go behind the
KhZhTO building and stop next to the enclosure. "So now, Volodya, show us what you can do. Turn onto
the railroad track and after about 50 meters on the
"It is going to fry us," Volodya said, looking at me roadbed go off onto that concrete that leads to the
fixedly. His face was red and tense. We were both ABK-1. Forward!"
wearing the breathing masks.
The Niva did not let us down. And Volodya did himself
"Stop here. Oh, ho! Even officers there.... And a gen- proud.
eral..."
There were several armored personnel carriers alongside
"A colonel general," Volodya stated more precisely. the ABK-1. In the open space in front of the entrance,
there was a formation of soldiers. In front of the forma-
"Sure enough, that's Pikalov...." tion, the officer was scolding his subordinates for vio-
lating the rules of radiation safety: they were sitting on
The soldiers and officers were gathering the fuel and the ground, they were smoking, they were stripping to
graphite by hand. They were walking along with buckets the waist to get a suntan, they were drinking vodka, and
and picking it up. They dumped the buckets into con- so on. The officers and the soldiers were not wearing
tainers. The graphite was scattered even outside the their breathing masks, which were hanging around their
fence beside our car. I opened the door, stuck the counter necks. The training had been bad, and they were not
of the radiometer almost up against a graphite block. The radiation-literate.... After all, it was from these young
reading was 2,000 roentgens per hour. I closed the door. lads that the next generation would come. Even 1
There was a smell of ozone, of fire fumes, of dust and of roentgen per year yields a 50-percent likelihood of muta-
something else. Roasted human flesh perhaps.... When tion....
the soldiers would get a bucketful, they would go over to
the metal containers with what seemed to me like "Volodya, you stay here awhile, I will be fast.... Be sure
dilly-dallying. Dear friends, I thought, that is a terrible you do not go away, else I will be stuck here."
harvest you are gathering.... The harvest of the last 20
years.... But where did it go? Where are the millions of Seizing the radiometer, I ran into the shelter. It was clean
rubles the state appropriated to develop robotics and there. Not even background. But stifling. Full of people.
manipulators? Where? Were they stolen? Wasted? The Like in a bomb shelter during the war. Desks and beds
faces of the soldiers and officers were dark brown: the along the sides for the personnel to rest. Outside, a group
nuclear sunburn. The weather forecasters were pre- of those not on duty were playing dominoes with
dicting heavy rains, and so that the radioactivity would abandon. You could hear the clicking of the pieces. Here,
not be washed into the soil with the rain, people had there were dosimetrists on duty, operators by the tele-
come instead of robots, which we did not have. When phones who were in touch with the unit control room
Aleksandrov, member of the academy, learned about and the staff headquarters in Chernobyl. On the wall,
this later, he was indignant: "They are not sparing people there was a map of radiation readings at various places in
at Chernobyl. All of this will come down on me...." But the industrial area. But I did not need it, I had taken
then he had not been indignant when they moved the readings. I went up to the second floor of the ABK. Silent
explosion-prone RBMK into the Ukraine.... and empty. I took the crossover gallery to the 10th level
of the deaerator galleries.... Now—fast forward! My
The heaps of sand were visible in the distance. The target was the Unit 4 control room. I had to see the place
people from Mintransstroy were digging under the where the fatal button of the explosion had been pressed,
JPRS-UEA-034-89 69
23 October 1989

to see at what level the pointers of the indicators of the "Let's go!"
position of the control rods had become stuck, to mea- Toward evening, on 9 May, at approximately 2030
sure the radioactivity at the control panel and nearby, to hours, a part of the graphite in the reactor began burning,
understand the kind of situation in which the operators a void had formed under the load that had been dumped,
had been working.... and that whole cumbersome pile of 5,000 tons of sand,
At a fast pace, almost running, I started along the long clay, and boron carbide went crashing down, hurling an
corridor toward the damaged unit. It was approximately immense amount of nuclear ash upward from beneath
600 meters to the Unit 4 control room. Faster.... itself. The radioactivity rose sharply at the plant, in
Pripyat—in the 30-km zone. The rise in radioactivity
The radiometer showed 1 roentgen per hour. The needle was even felt 60 km away in Ivankov and at other places.
was slowly crawling to the right. I passed the control In the darkness that had already come on, they took up
rooms of the first two units. The doors were open. I could the helicopter with difficulty and measured the radioac-
see the silhouettes of the operators. They were cooling
tivity.
the reactors. More accurately, they were maintaining the
reactors in the cooling mode. Unit 3. It had already The ash fell on Pripyat and surrounding fields.
caught it from the explosion. The radioactivity was 2
roentgens per hour. I went further. There was a metallic On 16 May, I flew off to Moscow.
taste in my mouth. The drafts could be felt, there was a
smell of ozone and fire fumes. Shards of glass broken by Testimony of Yn.N. Filimontsev, deputy chief of the
the explosion on the plasticized rubber floor. The radio- Main Scientific- Technical Administration of USSR
activity was 5 roentgens per hour. A gap beside the room Minenergo:
of the "Skala" complex—7 roentgens. Here was the KRB "After Chernobyl, we made a trip to the Ignalina Nuclear
control room of the second stage—10 roentgens. As Power Plant. In the light of the Chernobyl accident, we
though I was going through the passageways and cabins checked the physics there and the design of the RBMK
of a sunken ship. To the right, the door to the stairway- reactor. The sum of positive reactivity coefficients is still
elevator well, beyond to the spare control room. On the higher than at Chernobyl, in any case no less. The steam
left, the door to the Unit 4 control room. The people who coefficient is higher than 2 beta. They are doing nothing
worked there were now dying at Clinic No 6 in Moscow. about it. I asked them: Why do you not write through
I went into the backup control room, whose windows channels? They replied: What is the use?
had been blown out onto the pile of debris—500 roent-
gens per hour. The glass broken by the explosion "Nevertheless, the conclusions of the commission con-
crunched and screeched under my heels. Back out! I went cerning reconstruction of all RBMK reactors to improve
into the Unit 4 control room. At the entrance, 15 the safety are being rigidly enforced. Several official
roentgens, 10 roentgens at the work station of the SIUR results of investigations have been submitted to the
(of Leonid Toptunov, who was now dying). The arrows government. Including those of USSR Minenergo, the
on the synchroindicators of the control rods were stuck government commission, and Minsredmash. All outside
at a height of 2-2.5 meters. As I moved to the right, the organizations have arrived at conclusions blaming
radioactivity increased: 50-70 roentgens per hour. I Minenergo: the operators are at fault, and they do not
rushed out of the room and ran toward Unit 1. mention the reactor in any connection. Minenergo, by
Quickly...! contrast, submitted more weighty and balanced conclu-
sions, pointing both to the fault of the operating per-
So, there it was—the unthinkable had occurred. The sonnel and also to the defective design of the reactor.
peaceful atom in all of its primordial beauty and terri-
fying power.... "Shcherbina assembled all the commissions and set
them to agreeing on a conclusion to be submitted to the
Volodya was at his station. The sun, the blue sky, the 30° Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee."
temperature. The formation of soldiers in front of the
entrance had long ago dispersed, the soldiers were sitting
in the armored personnel carriers. Smoking. Two of
them had stripped to the waist and were sunning. Youth ...I am thinking about the dozens of those who died,
does not believe in death. Young immortals. This was so those whose names we know, and the many unborn, the
obvious here. I did not restrain myself, I shouted: lives interrupted, whose names we will never learn, since
they died because of interruption of the pregnancy of
"Boys, you are taking in rems unnecessarily! Is that what women irradiated in Pripyat on 26 and 27 April.
they taught you to do?"
By 17 May 1986, the VOKhR of USSR Minenergo had
A tow-haired soldier smiled, half-rising on the armor buried with military honors in the Mitino Cemetery the
plating. 14 men who were casualties in the damaged unit on 26
April and died in Moscow's Clinical Hospital No 6.
"But we aren't doing anything. We are sunning our- These were operators and firemen. The doctors continue
selves...." the fight for the lives of the other serious and less serious
70 JPRS-UEA-034-89
23 October 1989

patients. Staff members from the headquarters of USSR would write them humorous notes in verse, but some-
Minenergo have kept watch in the clinic, helping the times he broke down and sunk into a sudden depression.
medical personnel. For a very long time, he was irritated by loud talk, music,
the sound of heels. Once he shouted at a woman physi-
At the beginning of the seventies, I was a patient here on cian that the noise of her heels had caused his diarrhea.
the 9th floor in the ward of Professor I.S. Glazunov. At They did not allow his relatives to see him during the
that time, the building added on the left side was not yet first 3 weeks.
there. The ward was filled with patients with radiation
disease. Including some very serious cases. After 40-some days, his condition improved, and they
discharged Dima on the 82d day. He still had a deep
I recalled Dima, a young man about 30 years old. He had trophic ulcer (not healing) on his right shin. He limped
been irradiated while standing .5 meter from the source. badly. There was a question of amputating his right leg to
He had stood with his back to it and a bit of his right the knee....
side. The beam was directed downward. The shin, feet,
perineum, and buttocks received the maximum effect. The second patient was Sergey, 29 years old. He had
He had seen not only the flash itself, but its reflection on come from a scientific research institute where he had
the opposite wall and ceiling. Realizing what was manipulated radioactive substances in a hot cell. A
involved, he rushed to turn things off. He spent 3 nuclear flash had occurred because pieces of the sub-
minutes under the conditions of the accident. He took a stance were brought too close together.
very sober view of what had happened. He calculated the
approximate dose he had received. He arrived at the In spite of the vomiting that began immediately, he
clinic within an hour after the accident. calculated the approximate dose at 10,000 rads. In half
an hour, he lost consciousness. They brought him by
His temperature was 39, chills, nausea, excited, eyes plane in an extremely grave condition. Temperature 40,
glistening. He gesticulated as he spoke, presenting what edema of the face, the neck, and upper extremities. His
had happened in almost a joking manner. But very arms were so large that they could not measure his blood
coherently and logically. His jokes made everyone feel a pressure with the usual cuff, the nurses had to lengthen
bit awkward. Alert, tactful, and patient. it. He patiently went through the trepan biopsy and
punctation of bone marrow. He was conscious. Arterial
The day after the accident, they took bone marrow from pressure fell sharply 54 hours after the accident—to zero.
the patient at four points (the sternum, the iliac bone, Sergey died with acute dystrophy of the myocardium
both anterior and the left posterior). The average total
dose taken by the entire organism was 400 rads. On the after 57 hours....
4th-5th day, lesion of the mucous membrane of the The treating physician with whom I became friendly told
mouth, esophagus, and stomach. Ulcers in the mouth, on me: "This was essentially a death caused by the imme-
the tongue and cheeks, the mucous membrane came off diate effect of the ionizing radiation. Such patients
in layers, loss of sleep and appetite. Temperature 38-39, cannot be saved: The tissue of the heart simply falls
excited, eyes glistening like those of a drug addict. On the apart, cut off by the radiation...."
6th day, lesion of the skin of the right shin, edema, a
feeling of bursting inside it, numbness, morphine pains. The third patient, Nikolay, 36 years old, lived 58 days.
About 14 billion cells of bone marrow were transfused on This was unending torture: the most severe burns (the
the 6th day. They moved the patient to a sterile ward skin came off in layers), pneumonia, agranulocytosis.
with quartz lamps. The period of the intestinal syndrome What is more, he had extremely severe pancreatitis, and
began. Stool 25-30 times a day with blood and mucus. he screamed out loud from the pains in the pancreas.
Tenesmus, rumbling and overflow in the region of the Drugs did not help. He calmed down only after being put
cecum. No food taken by mouth for 6 days because of the to sleep with nitrous oxide.
severe lesion of the mouth and esophagus, so as not to It was early spring. April it seems. Just like now in
injure the mucous membrane. Nutrients administered Chernobyl. The sun was shining, and it was very quiet in
intravenously. the hospital. I stopped in to see Nikolay. He was lying
At the same time, slack painful blisters appeared on the alone in the sterile room. Alongside the bed was the table
perineum and buttocks. The shin of the right leg was with sterile surgical instruments, on another table simb-
blue-violet, swollen, glistening, smooth to the touch. ezon, Vishnevskiy's ointment, furacilin, tincture of prop-
Epilation (loss of hair) began on the 14th day, and it was olis, sea buckthorn oil, sterile dressing forceps with a
also quite strange. All the hair fell out on the right little piece of gauze wrapped on it. All of this was to treat
side—both on his head and on his body. Dima himself the denuded skin.
said that he was like an escaped convict. It was a kind of
gallows humor, but he did a great deal to cheer up the He lay on a high inclined bed. Above the bed was a
other two who had been irradiated with him. framework of steel rods holding the powerful lamps so
that he would not be cold, since Nikolay was lying there
They had gone utterly limp, although the course of the altogether naked. The oil of sea buckthorn had made his
disease in them was unquestionably less severe. Dima skin yellowish....
JPRS-UEA-034-89 71
23 October 1989

But what is this? Nikolay.... Vladimir Pravik.... As disappearance of flesh before one's eyes. He began to
though everything had strangely and amazingly repeated melt away, to dry up, to disappear. This was mummifi-
itself! Fifteen years later, the same room, the same cation of the skin and tissues of the body that had been
inclined bed with the framework overhead, the heat killed by the radiation. With every hour and every day,
lamps, the quartz lamps turned on by a timer.... the man was becoming smaller, smaller, smaller.
Vladimir Pravik was lying naked on the inclined bed Those who died—the blackened dried up mummies—
under the iron framework with the lamps. The entire had become as light in weight as children....
surface of his body had been burned, it was difficult to
distinguish where it had been burned by the fire and
where by radiation, it was all merged together. Mon- Testimony of V.G. Smagin:
strous edemas outside and inside. Swelling of the lips,
the oral cavity, the tongue and esophagus.... The nuclear "In Moscow in Clinic No 6 in Shchukinskaya Street, I
pain is a special one, it is insupportable and unsparing, it was first put on the fourth and then on the sixth floor.
causes shock and loss of consciousness. The entire body The more serious patients, the firemen and operating
of the heroic fireman was wracked with the nuclear pain. personnel, were on the eighth. Among them, the firemen
Earlier, they had injected him with morphine and other Vashchuk, Ignatenko, Pravik, Kibenok, Titenok, and
drugs, which had curbed the pain syndrome for a time. Tishchura; the operators Akimov, Toptunov, Per-
Pravik and his comrades were given intravenous injec- evozchenko, Brazhnik, Proskuryakov, Kudryavtsev, Per-
tions of bone marrow. They also received intravenous chuk, Vershinin, Kurguz, Novik....
infusions of extract from the liver of many embryos to
stimulate hemopoiesis. But death was not retreating.... "They lay in separate sterile wards with quartz lamps-
He had already had everything: agranulocytosis and the turned on several times a day according to a schedule.
intestinal syndrome and epilation (hair falling out) and The physiological solution which they injected into the
stomatitis with severe edema and exfoliation of the veins of all of us in the Pripyat medical unit affected
mucous membrane of the mouth.... But Vladimir Pravik many by lifting their spirits, took away the intoxication
stoically withstood the pain and the torture. This Slavic caused by the irradiation. Patients with doses less than
Hercules would have survived and conquered death if 400 rads felt best. The others felt only a bit better, they
only his skin had not been killed to its full depth. were wracked by severe pains in the skin that had been
irradiated and burned by the fire and the steam. The
And it would seem that in such a state he would not care pain in the skin and inside was exhausting, killing....
about the joys and griefs of the world, nor about the
destinies of his comrades. He after all was himself at the
edge of death. But no! So long as he could still speak "The first 2 days, 28 and 29 April, Sasha Akimov came
Vladimir Pravik attempted to learn what had happened to our ward, dark brown from the nuclear sunburn,
to his friends from the nurses and physicians, how they severely depressed. He kept saying one and the same
were, were they alive, were they still continuing the fight, thing, that he did not understand why it had exploded.
a fight now fought against death. He wanted them to After all, everything was going perfectly, and before he
fight, he wanted their courage to help him as well. And pressed the AZ button there had not been a deviation of
when in some inscrutable manner the news would still a single parameter. That tortures me more than the pain,
get through: he has died...he has died...he has died...— he told me on 29 April, when he departed forever."
like the very breath of death—the physicians would tell
the patients that it was not in this hospital, that it was Testimony of L.N. Akimov:
somewhere else, in another hospital.... It was a lie told to
save a life. "His parents and brother kept watch beside Sasha. He
And then the day came when it became clear: Everything and Sasha were twins. The brother gave his own bone
had been done that up-to-date radiation medicine was marrow for the transfusion. While he could still talk, he
capable of doing. All the methods of risky and ordinary kept repeating to his father and mother that he had done
therapy had been applied to combat the acute radiation everything right. This tortured him to the very end. He
sickness, but in vain. Even the most recent growth also said that he had no complaints to make against the
factors, which stimulate the reproduction of blood cells, personnel of his shift. They had done their duty.
did not help. Because a living skin was also necessary.
And Pravik did not have even a little piece of it. It had "I visited my husband the day before he died. At that
been entirely killed by the radiation. The radiation had point, he could no longer speak. But there was pain in his
also killed the mucous membranes. His mouth had dried eyes. I knew he was thinking about that damned night, he
up like arid soil. Pravik could not speak, he could only was reenacting everything inside himself over and over
gaze with his eyes and also blink his eyelids without again and he could not see that he was to blame. He
lashes, which had fallen out, he could look, and in his received a dose of 1,500 roentgens, perhaps even more,
eyes sometimes there flashed fervent reluctance to give and he was doomed. He became blacker and blacker, and
in to death. Then, the inner powers of resistance began to on the day he died he was as black as a Negro. He was
weaken and gradually vanished. The dying began, the charred all over. He died with his eyes open...."
72 JPRS-UEA-034-89
23 October 1989

Testimony of V.A. Kazarov, deputy chief of the VPO the coolant drain tank of the safety control system. A
Soyuzatomenergo: puff could have occurred, and the control rods shot out
of the reactor. As a consequence, a prompt-neutron
"I visited Slava Brazhnik on 4 May 1986. He was a excursion. They also thought about the 'tip' effect of the
young man of 30.1 tried to ask him questions about what control rods. If the formation of steam and the 'tip' effect
happened. After all, at that time it was plain that no one coincided—again a runaway reactor and explosion. At
in Moscow knew anything. Brazhnik lay there all some point, they all gradually came to the idea of a burst
swollen, dark brown. He strained to say that his whole of power. But, of course, they were not entirely con-
body pained terribly and that he was weak. vinced...."
"He said that first there was a break in the roof and that
a piece of the reinforced-concrete slab fell at the 0 level Testimony of A.M. Khodakovskiy, deputy general
of the turbine hall and broke an oil line. The oil caught director of the production association
fire. While he was trying to put it out and putting on a Atomenergoremont:
patch, another piece fell and broke the valve on a
feedwater pump. They turned that pump off and discon- "By order of the top leadership of USSR Minenergo, I
nected the loop. Black ash flew in through the break in was in charge of the burials of those who died from the
the roof.... He was in a very bad way, and I did not want Chernobyl radiation. As of 10 July 1986, we had buried
to ask him any more questions. He was constantly asking 28 persons.
for something to drink. I would give him Borzhomi "Many of the bodies were highly radioactive. Neither I
mineral water. nor those who worked in the morgue knew this at first,
'"The pain, pain everywhere.... The pain is terrible.... later we accidentally took a reading and found high
radioactivity. We began to wear suits impregnated with
'"I did not know,' he said, 'that pain could be so lead salts.
terrible....'"
"When it learned that the bodies were radioactive, the
Testimony of V.G. Smagin: public health station demanded that concrete rafts be
made at the bottom of the graves, as underneath the
"I went to see Proskuryakov 2 days before he died. He nuclear reactor, so that the radioactive fluids from the
was lying on an inclined bed. His mouth was horribly corpses would not go off into the groundwater. This was
swollen. No skin on his face. Bare. Bandages on his chest. impossible, blasphemous, we argued with them for a long
Heat lamps above him. He asked constantly for some- time. Finally, we agreed that the highly radioactive
thing to drink. I had mango juice with me. I asked if he corpses would be soldered into zinc caskets. That is what
wanted some juice. He said that he did, very much. He we did.
was tired, he said, of the mineral water. A bottle of
Borzhomi stood on his bedside table. I helped him to "In Clinic No 6, 19 persons were still being given final
drink the juice from a glass. I left the bottle of juice on treatment as of July 1986, 60 days after the explosion. In
his bedside table and asked the nurse to give it to him. one, burn patches appeared suddenly after 60 days when
He had no relatives in Moscow. For some reason, no one the general condition was fairly good. That was my
had come to see him.... case." Khodakovskiy pulled up his shirt and showed the
dark brown spots of indefinite form on his abdomen.
"The SIUR Lenya Toptunov had his father on watch by "These are also burn spots from working with radioac-
the bedside. He had already given his bone marrow for tive corpses...."
his son's transplant. But it did not help. He stayed at his
son's bedside day and night, he would turn him over. He At this point, I would like to stop and quote excerpts
was burned to blackness all over. Only his back was still from an article by the American nuclear scientist K.
light-colored. He had gone everywhere with Sasha Aki- Morgan. I would have quoted words to this effect by A.
mov, like his shadow. And they burned up identically Aleksandrov or Ye. Velikhov, for example, members of
and almost at the same time. Akimov died on 11 May the academy, but they did not utter such words. Here is
and Toptunov on the 14th. They were the first of the what Morgan said:
operators to die.
"It has now become obvious that there is no such thing
"Many who were already considered to have recovered as a small threshold dose of ionizing radiation which
died suddenly. Thus, Anatoliy Sitnikov, deputy chief would be harmless or from which the risk of illness (even
engineer for operation of the first stage, died suddenly on leukosis) would be equal to zero.... Radioactive noble
the 35th day. He had had two transfusions of bone gases (RBG) are the principal source of irradiation of the
marrow, but it was incompatible, he rejected it. population during normal operation of a nuclear power
plant. Krypton-85, with a half-life of 10.7 years, makes a
"Every day those who were recovering would gather in particular contribution....
the smoking room of Clinic No 6, and they were all
tortured by one thing: Why did the explosion occur? "I would like to express great dissatisfaction with the
They thought about it and conjectured. They supposed practice of 'burning' and 'scorching' temporary repair
that the explosive mixture of gases could have built up in workers, which is rather widespread in the nuclear power
JPRS-UEA-034-89 73
23 October 1989

industry. What is meant by this is the recruitment of the general procurator and asked him where I stood and
poorly instructed and trained personnel for temporary what to do....' 'And what did the procurator say?' 'Wait,
performance of 'hot' (radioactive) operations. Because he said, you will be called.'..."
such personnel do not understand the risk of chronic
irradiation, radiation accidents can occur with high They arrested Bryukhanov, Dyatlov, and Fomin in
probability, and they can inflict harm not only on August 1986.
themselves, but others as well. I consider the practice of Bryukhanov was calm. He took into the cell with him
'scorching' personnel profoundly immoral, and until textbooks and reading matter to study the English lan-
such a practice is repudiated in the nuclear power guage. And he said that he had now been condemned to
industry, I will cease to be an active supporter of that death like Frunze....
industry....
Dyatlov was also calm, restrained.
"Over the last 10 or 15 years, new data have shown that
the risk of cancer in people affected by radiation is Fomin lost his grip. He was hysterical. He tried to kill
tenfold greater than we calculated in 1960, if not more, himself in his cell. He broke his glasses and cut his veins
and that there is no such thing as a harmless dose...."7 with the glass. They noticed it in time. The trial was
scheduled for 24 March 1987; it had been postponed
And another judgment—that of Andrey Ivanovich Voro- because of Fomin's diminished responsibility.
byev, outstanding Soviet scientist, full member of the
USSR Academy of Medical Sciences, and a major spe- I sought out and had a meeting with Razim Ilgamovich
cialist in the treatment of leukosis: Davletbayev, deputy chief of the turbine shop of Unit 4.
As I have already written, he was in the Unit 4 control
"I think that humanity's medieval thinking must come room at the moment of the explosion. He received more
to an end after this accident. than 300 roentgens during the accident. He looked like a
"There are a great many things that need to be reassessed very sick man. He was suffering from radiation hepatitis.
today. And although the number of victims of the His face was very swollen. His eyes did not look well and
accident is limited, and most of the casualties have were very bloodshot. But he bore up admirably. He was
remained alive and will recover, what happened at in good spirits and composed. In spite of his disability,
Chernobyl has shown us the scale of the disaster that he was working. A brave man.
could happen. It must literally reshape our thinking,
including the thinking of every individual person, who- I asked him to tell about what happened on that night of
ever he might be, worker or scientist. After all, no 26 April 1986. He said that they had forbade him to talk
accident is accidental. Which is to say that we must about the engineering. Only through the first depart-
understand that the atomic age requires the kind of ment. I said that I knew everything about the engi-
precision with which rocket trajectories are calculated. neering, even more than he did. What I needed were
The atomic age cannot be atomic in just one respect. It is details about the people. But Razim Ilgamovich was
very important to understand that people today must sparing: "When the firemen appeared on the turbine
know, for example, what chromosomes are just as well as hall, the operating personnel were still all there. During
they know what a four-stroke internal combustion the emergency operations in the turbine room, I ran off
engine is. It is not possible to live otherwise. If you want several times to the control room, and I reported to the
to live in the atomic age—create a new culture, a new shift chief. Akimov was calm, he issued orders straight-
forwardly. When it began, everyone encountered it
way of thinking...."
calmly. After all, by the nature of our occupation we were
ready for something like that. Not to such a degree, of
Testimony of V.G. Smagin: course, but still...." It was obvious that Davletbayev was
trying to speak within the limits of what the first depart-
"Nikolay Maksimovich Fomin, chief engineer of the ment allowed him. I did not interrupt him. He described
Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, was also treated in Aleksandr Akimov, his watch chief: "Akimov was a very
Clinic No 6. He spent a month there. I had dinner with orderly and conscientious man. Amiable and sociable. A
him in a restaurant after he was discharged and not long member of the Pripyat Party Gorkom. A good com-
before his arrest. He was pale and depressed. He asked rade...." He refused to give a characterization of Bryukh-
me: 'Vitya, what do you think, what will they do with anov. He said: "I do not know Bryukhanov."
me? Hang me?' 'Why do you talk like that, Maksimych?'
I said. 'Gather your courage, go through with it all to the He expressed his opinion about the press, which had
end....' printed stories from Chernobyl: "It represented us oper-
"I was in the clinic at the same time as Dyatlov for a ating personnel as illiterates, almost villains. It was
time. Before he was discharged, he said: 'They will try under the influence of the press that all the photographs
me. That is clear. But if they allow me to speak and were torn from the graves in Mitino Cemetery, where our
listen, I will say that I did everything correctly.' lads are buried. They had spared only Toptunov's pho-
tograph. He was still quite young. As though he were
"I met Bryukhanov not long before his arrest. He said: inexperienced. They consider us villains. Yet the Cher-
'No one needs me, I am waiting to be arrested. I went to nobyl Nuclear Power Plant generated electric power for
74 JPRS-UEA-034-89
23 October 1989

10 years. Not an easy way to make a living, as you know. artificial flowers with red ribbons and inscriptions on
You worked there yourself...." "When did you leave the them from relatives and those they worked with. On the
unit?" I asked. "At 0500 hours. Acute vomiting began. graves of the nuclear operators, there are not so many
But we still managed to do things: We put out the fire in flowers and no wreaths at all. The USSR Ministry of
the turbine hall, and we displaced the hydrogen from the Nuclear Power Industry and Minenergo did not even
generator, and we replaced the oil in the turbine oil tank mention those who died on the anniversary of Cherno-
with water. We were not simple operatives. We byl. Yet they were also heroes, they did everything they
rethought many things. But at that point the train had were able. They showed courage and fearlessness. They
already left, I thought of the production process at the gave their lives....
moment when the replacements took over. And it was
already impossible to stop it. But we were not simple But there are also those who lie here who were on the
operatives...." scene of the tragedy that night by accident and who did
not understand the true importance of what happened.
Yes, in many respects one can agree with Davletbayev.
Nuclear operators are not simply operatives. In the Clear blue sky, sun, warm weather. The croaking of the
process of operating nuclear power plants, they have to ravens taking off and landing on the graves, the main
make a large number of independent and responsible street of the cemetery stretching far away to the horizon
decisions, frequently very risky ones, in order to save the and people on that street, people going to the graves of
unit and to come out of an emergency situation or those dear to them.
serious transient state with honor. Unfortunately, you
will never have instructions and regulations that The sounds of shots from automatic weapons were heard
envisage the entire diversity of every possible combina- not far from where the people from Chernobyl were
tion of states and maladjustments. The experience and buried. I looked in that direction. A platoon of soldiers
professionalism of operating personnel are important had saluted with kalashnikovs. A man who came up said
here, too. And Davletbayev is right when he says that that they were burying a soldier who had been killed in
after the explosion the operators displayed miracles of Afghanistan.
heroism and fearlessness. They are worthy of admira-
tion. Gold stars were engraved on the gravestones of the
firemen. Here lie Pravik, Kibenok, Ignatenko, Vash-
But this after all was already after the explosion.... chuk, Tishchura, Titenok....
There are no signs of distinction on the marble grave-
The Mitino Cemetery stones of the graves of the nuclear operators. Nor are
On the first anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster, I went there the photographs which there had been at first.
to the Mitino Cemetery to honor the memory of the Now, there remains only the photograph on the grave of
firemen and nuclear operators who had been killed. Leonid Toptunov. Still just a boy, with a mustache,
From the "Planemaya" subway station, it is a 20- round face, plump cheeks. His father erected alongside
minute ride by bus No 741; an immense city of the dead the grave a neat and beautiful little bench. It seemed to
me that Toptunov had the grave most lovingly cared for.
spreads immediately beyond Mitino village.
The cemetery is quite new, neat, the graves extend over Twenty-six graves.... The heroic firemen rest in six of
the horizon. them. In the other 20, operators of Unit 4, the electri-
cians, the turbine operators, and the adjusters. Two
To the left of the entrance is a neat crematorium that is women—Luzganova and Ivanenko, who worked in the
faced with yellow ceramic tile and is continuously in militarized security department. One had been in the
operation, black smoke sped from its stack. To the right passageway opposite Unit 4 and stayed on duty there the
of the entrance is the cemetery office. entire night until morning. The other was in the
KhOYaT (spent nuclear fuel storage) that was under
It is a young cemetery. Trees planted on the graves have construction—300 meters from the unit. And in these
still not reached full growth. In the spring, they are dark graves there are also true heroes, whose courage saved
for the present, they have not leafed out. At various the plant just as much as the courage of the firemen. I
places in the cemetery, flocks of ravens fly up and land have already spoken about them. Here they are: Vershi-
on the graves, they are pecking away at the food left on nin, Novik, Brazhnik, Perchuk—the machine operators
the graves—eggs, sausage, candy.... in the turbine hall, who extinguished the fire inside, the
I walked down the main street of the cemetery. Some 50 fire whose spread would have had horrible consequences
meters from the entrance, to the left of the road, are 26 for the entire nuclear power plant.
graves with white stone markers. Above each grave, a
small marble gravestone with gilt engraving: last name, As far as I know, they have not been recommended for
first name, patronymic, date of birth, and date of death. awards. Nor has any award been given to Valeriy
Ivanovich Perevozchenko, reactor shop shift chief, who
The graves of the firemen, six of them, are covered with did everything possible and impossible to save his sub-
flowers: vases and pots with living flowers, wreaths of ordinates, to get them out of the zones of high radiation.
JPRS-UEA-034-89 75
23 October 1989

Nor Anatoliy Andreyevich Sitnikov, deputy chief engi- Let us bow our heads to them—Chernobyl's martyrs and
neer for operations of the first stage, who had not spared heroes.
his life in order to understand what actually had hap-
pened to the fourth reactor. Nor Georgiy Illarionovich So, what is the main lesson?
Popov, vibration adjuster from Kharkov, who is lying The main lesson is a sense of the fragility of human life,
here and who happened to be there entirely by accident, its vulnerability. Chernobyl demonstrated man's omnip-
but he did not leave the turbine hall and in every way he otence and helplessness. And it issued a warning: Do not
could helped the turbine operators to put out the fire in become intoxicated with your omnipotence, man, do not
the turbine hall. Although he could have left and play jokes with it. For you are the cause, but you are also
remained alive. Nor has there been an award for the the consequence.
electrician Anatoliy Ivanovich Baranov, who along with
Lelechenko localized the emergency situation with the In the end, it is this that is more painful than anything:
electrical equipment, replaced the hydrogen in the gen- Those chromosome threads severed by the radiation,
erator, supplied power to Unit 4 when the gamma rays those genes killed or mutilated, those who have already
were raging. departed into the future. Departed, departed....
Lelechenko is buried in Kiev. He has been awarded the May 1987
Order of Lenin posthumously.
There is one thing more to be said about awards. The Footnotes
material on awards to the nuclear operators, alive and 1. A. Petrosyants, "Ot nauchnogo poiska k atomnoy
dead, was prepared under a cloak of silence. Why? one promyshlennosti" [From Scientific Exploration to a
asks. Nuclear Industry], Moscow, Atomizdat, 1972, p 73.
I walk by the graves, I stop for a long time by each one. 2. Yu. Sivintsev, "I.V. Kurchatov i yadernaya energe-
I lay flowers at the gravestones. The firemen and six tika" [I.V. Kurchatov and Nuclear Power Generation],
nuclear operators died in horrible pain during the period Moscow, Atomizdat, 1980, p 25.
from 11 to 17 May 1986. They received the highest doses
of radiation, they took in more radionuclides than 3. Marl is a sedimentary rock consisting of clay and
anyone else, their bodies were highly radioactive, and, as limestone.
I have written already, they were buried in soldered zinc
caskets. That was required by the public health depart- 4. RBMK—high-power channel reactor.
ment, and I have thought about this with bitterness, 5. For more detail on this, see G. Medvedev, "Expert
since ihey have prevented the earth from doing its last Evaluation," DRUZHBA, No 6, 1986.
job—turning the bodies of those who died into dust. This
damned nuclear age! Even here, which has been the 6. The rem (Russian ber) is the biological equivalent of a
ending place for human life since time immemorial, roentgen, 1 rem of X-ray irradiation corresponds to 1 rad
traditions thousands of years of old are being violated. of absorbed dose.
Even burial in a human way, commitment to the earth, is
impossible. So, this is what it has come to.... 7. K. Morgan, "Puti umensheniya radiatsionnogo
vozdeystviya atomnoy energetiki v budushchem" [Ways
But still I say to them: May you rest in peace. Sleep of Reducing the Future Radiation Impact of the Nuclear
peacefully. Your death has stirred people up, they have Power Industry], Moscow, Atomizdat, 1980, p 64.
come if only an inch out of their lethargy, out of the
blindness and grayness of doing what they are told.... COPYRIGHT: Zhurnal "Novyy mir", 1989.
1°
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