Talk about the various organizations that are involved both on the site and in their offices; about the medical radiology centre that has been created there. I was particularly disappointed after I visited several western stations. If you would wish to read them, then here, we translated them for English readers: Tape 1 side A In this part Legasov speaks about his first days in the accident zone. And the design itself had, Id say, at least three fundamental flaws. Concurrently with the preparation for the launch of the 1st and 2nd blocks, and with performing the launch operations, work was underway on the construction of the sarcophagus. Yes, a nuclear reactor is like a samovar; much simpler than a heat station. Formally however I had to be replaced in Silaevs team by Eugeny Petrovich Ryazantsev - deputy of the director of our Nuclear Energy Institute. On the whole, this extraordinary situationnot a trivial situation, a tragic situation, a difficult situation of immense magnitudehas shown that it requires not only the mobilisation of considerable communication resources, but also a very creative and skilful use of these resources, to ensure that the population receives information in the needed sequence and quantity, who can refer to the information with complete confidence, and most importantly, be able to use this information for practical purposes; or to indicate when to worry, and conversely, when to stay calm so that it is quite regular and not sudden. I was shocked by the speed and scale at which all the needed materials were delivered to fulfill this operation. The air force, the helicopter groups, worked very precisely. Even then, during those difficult days, despite everything we were, it may seem paradoxically, in good spirits. Do you understand? Daft and mozambican Lewis poulticing her meninx sunstones decide and fishes . At this point, I want to say that, particularly in the initial period, considering the tragedy of the situation, considering such despair, I would say, considering the lack of technical means, lack of experience in handling such a large scale catastrophe, confusion and uncertainty could have easily arisen in decision making. In January 1986, Legasov co-authored a propaganda piece in Soviet Life magazine claiming there had been no nuclear accidents that had seriously threatened personnel or risked contamination, which ignored multiple serious nuclear incidents in the Soviet Union. It was quite hard to get to these bubblers because the adjacent corridors were flooded with water from the time when they were trying to cool down the reactor with water. And magnesium oxide, the most heat-conducting of all ceramics, similarly carried the heat away. Regularly, several times a day, the leaders of the GC spoke to comrades Dolgikh Vladimir Ivanovich, Rizhkov Nikolai Ivanovich. The most straightforward procedure would have been to replace the diesel generators at the Chernobyl power plant with those that would perform better and all that process of tests and checks would simply have become unneeded. There werent any radio-controlled aircraft equipped with dosimetric devices. The shot was on station territory but it was in a room that was heavily contaminated, making it impossible to load it into the helicopters. About the station itself, the history of, construction, its exploitation, I'll talk a little later, so as not to interrupt the. All the power and all the responsibility must be in the same hands. The Institute did acquire a taste of it. Very interestingly, the station staff consisted of 45 people, if I recall correctly, who had to plan the reloading operation; that is they planned who, of the people that didn't work at the station, had to participate in the reloading. The RBMK reactor was not equipped with such a second protection system that was operator-independent and not part of the control system. And so Meshkov Alexander Grigorievich came up to me and said that a Government Commission had been appointed and that I was included in it. I tried to explain to him that there was no possibility of dropping iron shot because of the reasons I mentioned earlier. They selected people, agreed on the time, arranged the needed tools, and decided the sequence of carrying out the procedure. This is nuclear and non-nuclear chemistry. Building one case takes 2-3 years. Now it has merged with Minmash. In this case, they had received the following signal: "1-2-3-4"; which means that an event had occurred at the station that involved nuclear hazard, radiation hazard, fire hazard and explosive hazard, that is to say, all possible types of hazard. Since I have touched upon communication a little, mentioned the reactor a bit, it may be time when I can express some personal opinions about how on earth I got involved with this story, how I was connected to it, how I understood the history and quality of the development of nuclear energy and how I understand it now. After this, all the specialists would begin work on their assigned tasks; and in the late eveningat least when Scherbina was the chairman, around 10 in the eveninga summary was reported. And they were built not by the Ministry of Medium Machine Building but by the Ministry of Energy. This section cannot be concluded with only the obvious and clear things. When I arrived there for the first time, I witnessed a grim scene because the first proper dosimetric posts were set up there. There it was quiet, calm, everything as in ordinary life. This would facilitate heat transfer. Thats why we quickly discontinued this measure. They were engaging and interesting. Sitting in his home, Valery Legasov, the deputy director of the Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy, records tapes recounting the true account of what happened at the Chernobyl Nuclear power plant in the Ukraine on the day it exploded. It took away the heat so that the uranium wont melt. In the tapes, Legasov claimed that Soviet government security and. Our Institute was not part of the Ministry of Medium Machine Building. The actions of the station management are very hard to explain. I remember that on-site at Chernobyl was the chairman of the Government Planning Committee of Ukraine, Vitaly Andreyevich, working as part of the Operative Groupa remarkably calm person, energetic; who would understand things perfectly even before we had finished talking. He was also concerned at the lack of safety literature distributed to the population. [2] While he was a shy student, he excelled in both academic work and social activities being elected secretary of his school's Komsomol committee. The first measure showed that there was a powerful source of neutron radiation. The operative group led by Nikolai Ivanovich Ryzhkov was created and almost the entire Soviet industry was allocated to the disaster. There is no standardised system of evaluation. Explain that this, in fact, was a miscalculation in terms of resourcesthe capacity of the Donetsk Basin to supply coal was overestimatedand also a miscalculation in terms of transport and ecology, because at the time we did not understand the extent of land transport if energy is based on organic sources or the extent of pollution including radioactive elements. [37] However, the operators were found to have deviated from operational procedures, changing test protocols on the fly, as well as having made "ill judged" actions, making human factors a major contributing factor. After Ryzhkov and Ligachev arrived at the disaster zone, journalists were allowed in. First, the fate of the local population, and the number of members of station personnel that should remain at the station (and, in its current state, continue to service it). Because in our Kurchatov Institute itself, the author of the development, Professor Feinberg Savely Moiseevich, now deceased, was advocating the possibility of a reactor without containment, particularly RBMK. What is the real situation there? In response to this, I outlined the situation for him; that basicallyas it was after the 2nd of May; the call was around the 4th or 5th of Maythe radiation emissions from the destroyed block have ceased, and the situation is currently under control. But at the same time, because the information was presented from a particular, specific point of view each time, the nation did not get a daily or maybe at least weekly, depending on the state of events, idea of what was going on. There were a couple of thousand of such cars in the city. As he told me later, he called Veretennikov in the Ministry of Energy about this, then Shasharin, got as far as Neporozhniy, and then reported it to comrade Maryin at the Central Party Committee. And, indeed, in the hands of qualified people that did their job well, our devices seemed both reliable and safe to operate. [1] The institute members denied Legasov the position which was perhaps surprising given his seniority and public visibility. I had very few supporters. You know, similar to our current state quality control, a lot of specialists appeared that were not involved in engineering or scientific activities. These circumstances need to be explained. Adamovich: There were telegrams from Ryzhkov. And once containment became optional, temptation arose to build another [reactor] line that would help the country without overloading the machine building industry. Its clear that a human is irreplaceable when one has to perform certain complex tasks like a cargo drop or some other operation involving large devices placed on a helicopter. This is the main accomplishment of those people who spent considerable time there in the initial days. Tape 1 A Deeper Dive A Deeper Dive Legasov also describes how stress he was on the way to Chernobyl and how tense the Tape 2. This, by the way, I felt less keenly, because my own functions as a member of the Energy Commission were to determine the rate of commissioning nuclear power stations, the chronology of tasks, and the structure of nuclear energy. Adamovich: Was there a conversation about, maybe, what you would do, and you reported on that? And for the last 20 years, he spoke wherever he could, at the Politburo, etc. He was very angry with, say, Makuhin, the First Deputy Minister of Energy and Electrification, who, it seemed to him, was working slowly; and he even made a quick decision to fire him. At the same time, I want to highlight the fact that although these things are irritating when faced day after day, at that moment the people were so determined, they so wanted to complete their work, that all these past cases of sloppiness did not cause any fuss or outcry. The first four tapes feature only Legasov giving a recounting of the entire event, from the moment he learned of the accident to his final days at the Kurchatov Institute. The third groupimplementers, not researchers; these were mostly the army divisions began decontaminating the rooms in the 1st and 2nd block, and also prepared for the construction of the sarcophagus, because the design was already in progress in Moscow. Not every work progress was documented, whether it had been completed or not. Subsequently, there were a few days of active emission of radioactive particles, fuel, mainly due to the graphite burning. These projects failed not because they were basically wrong. And Anatoly Petrovich had such a humanly understandable and even likeable trait, namely, reliance on people with whom he has worked for many years. However, in whispers, all the operators, all the engineers and experts were saying that this reactor is very difficult to control. That was accurate TASS information but along with it were many journalistic articles about specific battles, about specific people, about heroes at the home front, etc. However, from stories and literature, I also knew that a part of this committee was engaged in intelligence and counterintelligence work. The iron would oxidize and the temperatures would rise further still. valery legasov cause of death. But since this philosophy of mandatory containment was not adopted by the leadership of nuclear energy of the time, the RBMK reactor did appear. And the RBMK reactor is a single-circuit reactor. The second one. More and more resources were spent on creating facilities that were not directly related to nuclear energy. I was told that the members of the commission should gather at Vnukovo airport at 1600 hours. To do this, a wide range of chemical solutions were tested that had to be practical, could cut off the contaminated areas while letting water through but, prevent considerable spread of dust. But, at the same time, they didnt report other things like the appearance of typical radiation injuries and so on. And it is very important to describe the measures that were taken and their significance. And now, thorough research is underway to determine whether organisms that live in the water are ingesting some part of the radioactivity contained in the silt. He was working on a helium-cooled high-temperature reactor, and we considered this reactor as having the best technological capabilities for our national economy. And when I visited the Chernobyl station after the accident and saw what was happening there, I myself drew a precise and unequivocal conclusion, that the Chernobyl disaster is an apotheosis, the pinnacle of all the mismanagement that has been carried out for decades in our country. But what was my reasoning? But caesium and strontium, these emissions, they did spread to large areas. Legasov: No, as far as I know, Petrosyants was not specifically involved in these matters. So he was in shock. The transfer was entirely unjustified. It was particularly hard for the miners because, beneath the station territory, a large number of pipes and plates were buried in the ground. Gloomy faces. These reactors had shown their considerable superiorities, in terms of efficiency, potential water consumption for cooling the reactor, and the range of uses of such reactors in technological processes. For example, I actually can today. Well, actively aid Anatoly Petrovich in the management of the institute, considering his occupation at the Academy of Sciencesplanning the work of the institute, the regime of its work. Legasov: That tomorrow, there will be 25 or more. And only when we had the containments, the stations being built for the last 5-6 years, the ones being designed now, and the ones that will be built, all are being built with containments. Those needed to maintain the city and service the station remained. So we started taking various measurements using a specially-designed collimator, which showed that the activity on the roof is not the only source affecting the radiation conditions in the 3rd block. This was sort of central, very important task. In this case I could not stand it so I wrote a very angry letter together with Anatoly Pavlovich where we strongly objected this excessive allocation of people who would get high radiation doses when constructing that second plate. And we even thought that it would partially evaporate, cool down in the higher area and then flow down again. For all new projects and new ideas, this design organisation fully recognized the authority of the Institute of Nuclear Energy, and readily consulted with it and maintained contact. The crater in the reactor produced a column of white smoke, several hundred metres long, most likely consisting of graphite combustion byproducts. Since I didnt have administrative authority over this department but generally understood many specific details of what was going on, and because I was concerned, I began to suggest to the reactor department an engineering, not physical, approach to solving problems. When the fire ended, when we established that the surface temperature, that was monitored, is not higher than 300 degrees Celsius, all actions targeted towards eliminating the fire itself and its spread ended. At the time of the birth of nuclear energy, everything was sensible, because it was a completely new field of science - nuclear physics, neutron physics. [5] During 1953, he proposed reforms to the Komsomol committee to address what he perceived as indifference and passivity of its members. the morning at the Ministry, which owns the Institute of Atomic Energy. We were all already used to how this very old yet good demagogue, with a loud confident voice, could narrate how good things were in our ministry, for an hour. That is idle talk; even though it is so very widespread. Valery Legasov is a real person The Mad Men actor is playing Valery Legasov. When the first experiments in 1982 and 1983 showed that during a coastdown, the turbine does not maintain the necessary electrotechnical parameters to serve the stations own needs, nobody even thought about solving this problem from the other side, more precisely, reducing the time needed for the backup diesel generators to start and output at the required levels. Legasov: Ministry of Medium Machine Building. And now, the situation is indeed like in the Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoys storyThere are no guilty in the world. When one looks at the chain of events, why someone acted in this way and another in that way and so on, it is impossible to point to a single culprit, an initiator of all the unpleasant events that led to the crime. But coming back to Pripyat As I said, on the 26th of April, at 11 pm, it was decided that the people will be evacuated the next day. Then an initial assumption was made that the source of such high activity was the roof of the 3rd block on which was a lot of scattered fuel. They tried as much as they could to base their decisions on the specialists point of view. "[5] Journalists Vladimir Stepanovich Gubarev and Yuriy Shcherbak claim that his suicide was a conscious attempt to draw attention to the lack of nuclear safety in the Soviet Union. Then around the 9th of May, we resumed when a flaming spot was sighted while circling the reactor. He listened very carefully (I thought that it would be hard for the country to supply so much material in a matter of days) and as I got to know later, ordered 6000 tons of lead, because he thought that we could have made a mistake in our calculations and it would be better to have surplus lead instead of not having enough. But the most demoralizing part, which makes one worried and sick, is that the measures needed are known. I must say that, of course, there were many senseless things done in the course of this work. These were the problems that I was researching. I will talk about Aleksandrovs role later but it is important for me that you understand that the main issue was the 10-year delay. Had the philosophy of safety been correct, then our experts would have, without a doubt, found technical solutions conforming to this philosophy. Secondly, we cannot talk about the hydrogen explosion without mentioning that, in addition to the steam explosion, chemical energy related to interactions within all that molten mass was added. There are questions like why was it announced so late? Which button to press, how long to wait, what to do. It contains the above introduction and the original translation of the text, which I will replace with my revised version when I finish it. Our brainstorming session was conducted in constant consultation with Moscow, with whom one of us was constantly on the phone - for example Anatoly Petrovich Alexandrov. Either way, we didnt know the temperature inside the core; if, for example, it were to be lower than the melting temperature of iron, dropping this material would not have been effective because the iron would not melt and the mass would not stabilise. The number was not precise, but it was clear that around 100 people had gotten radiation injuries. Because it was as follows. Part of fuel can get into the barboteurs, be it lower or upper one and we did not know at that time whether there was water or not. But I saw for myself how they would grab the most famous people there, and interview them about some specific issue. I will discuss the station itself, its history and operation a bit later so I won't disrupt the chronological order of this recording. This was the general environment in which all this work was happening. Anywhere from one millirntgen per hour up to a maximum of tens of millirntgen per hour - obviously, this was not a healthy environment, but it did allow for some discussion about what to do next. [27] His treatment may have been that his independence, his habit of violating the chain of command and his lack of deference to the scientific establishment had irked senior members of the scientific community. The 1st and 2nd blocks continued to work despite their internal rooms having a relatively high level of contamination which was in the tens or even hundreds of milliroentgens per hour. Unfortunately, the place where the iron shot was kept had been affected by the initial outburst of radioactive particles and was contaminated, rendering it completely unusable. All this was mandatory every day. Second, at the high temperatures that we had measured at some points, the process would get reversed. 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