Another set of tasks was performed by the construction experts from the Ministry of Energy who were building a temporary village called Green Cape (Zelyoniy Mis). This was the so-called road to development. It was immediately obvious to us that dropping anything from a height of 200 metres would create a complex situation around reactor number 4 - when 200 kilogrammes of material falls from a height of 200 metres it throws up dust, and that dust carries some amount of radioactive material. In fact, there is triple ownership, because there is also a head office, or some deputy minister, who has the last word on a particular technical decision. The time available to solve it is not too small but not too much either. Going back a bit, it has to be highlighted that the actions of the firemen were logical. So in this sense, not an addition but actually an alternative to today's energy. I have already spoken about that. But the radioactivity was already growing exponentially at this time. This centre was doing very extensive work on measuring radioactivity and the release of radioactivity, on wind transfer, on the dynamic conditions of various areas, and made a big contribution to the scientific research and practical plans of all this work done in Chernobyl. If not, I can suggest all that is needed. Nikolai Ivanovich Ryzhkov had been on ChNPP many times . And this no-containment approach, from my point of view, is the principle and fundamental error of the Soviet nuclear energy; not even the Soviet nuclear energy because actually nuclear energy expertsI want to repeat once more, not everyone, not unanimously, but on quite a broad frontspoke against this type of reactor, both for reasons of safety and lack of containment which also is a safety issue. He felt that the leadership would be split between the council and the USSR Academy of Sciences, saying "This will lead to disaster. Velikhov in particular was concerned that the reactor remains could melt deep into the ground, as shown in the US film The China Syndrome. [2] In 19491954, he attended School No. I repeat that and I personally was a witness to that. Sidorenko Viktor Alekseyevich, who also was a member of the Government Commission from Gosatomenergonadzor, insisted on an immediate evacuation of the population. [11], There are several theories concerning Legasov's motivations and state of mind. Immediately in that, room Alexander Grigoryevich Meshkov looked in - First Deputy Minister and said, that the Government Commission on the Chernobyl accident had been, Commission should meet at the Vnukovo airport by f, Immediately I left the asset, got into the car and went to my institute. Two of these ten projects, I am afraid, will have the same fate, and for roughly the same reasons. Even before this commission was created, I had been charged with assessing this project. Unfortunately, there was no local broadcasting network to announce this. But the main reason is not even the errors in the design of the reactorwhich of course had their place and for which probably the respective specialists will have to answerbut the main reason is the violation of the basic safety principle for such devices. This is important because of this. In the accident, no one was killed or exposed to radiation. The first was about the population. They then themselves went to the most contaminated areas and covered them with these solutions. This gave the impression that the reactor was live, that something serious had certainly happened. [8][9][10] He also had two grandchildren, Misha and Valerik. Some personal impressions of the time . You know, I couldn't even assume that the Operative group would make such strong-willed purposeful decisions. But it was very quickly discovered that the water itself did not have much contamination, but the silt was affected. For some reason, this was not accepted. This could have resulted in a terrible disaster - the rupture of a large pipeline of the VVER device. Do you follow? Legasov: Hope this isnt confusing to you. So, [in Chernobyl] our press reported a lot of information of the second type, about people, about their impressions, about what was happening there, but reported very little, unlike the TASS regular, about what has happened so far and what has changed. And we had to know whether those bubblers were empty or not. But I should tell you that the Minsk station, in particular, wouldnt pose any danger. The speed of introducing safety systems was, as it seemed, insufficient. But this reactor was not considered bad because of safety reasons. But under what conditions? But still, some practical experience had already been accumulated. As I recall, there is not one person, or group, who leads focused work on analyzing the situation in the nuclear energy industryabout how to change the usual practices of building stations, of supplying equipmentdespite the fact that such individual episodes have been happening. I will repeat myself that groundwater was relatively close to the surface under the station. And thereafter would be the concept, developed by Vladimir Mikhailovich, about what safe nuclear energy should look like. And the very fact that the station could independently perform any actions not authorised by the experts is already a defect in the relationship of the experts with this station. As a result, essentially sound projects, when developed, turned out to be overly expensive, cumbersome, and not accepted for execution. First of all, we had to introduce as many boron-containing substances as was possible, so that under whatever conditions of fuel-mass movement, they would provide enough in the way of effective neutron absorbers. That was true indeed. We met people that were ready to do any job in any circumstances. This situation continues today. He wrote a doctoral dissertation and later published a book at approximately that time, in which he proved the impossibility of having nuclear stations without containments, no matter the type, VVER or RBMK; that it was dangerous and criminal. Simultaneously, the military continued to do all the necessary recon operations. The staff began to age. And since the number of such [nuclear] devices must increase, the problem becomes urgent. This first meeting was simple and straightforward. But fortunately, nature itself acts in a way that silt holds the individual particles of radionuclides quite firmly. When a group of soldiers was brought to me, I explained the conditions under which they would be working and said that I only wanted to work with those who were comfortable with it. We became convinced that no country in the world had a proven, experimentally verified action plan for such a situation. That is why the Finnish station was constructed with a cover. This is what I want to tell you today. Would we be breaking the law? 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. In this reactor, 1,700 tons. And you go into Skazochniy where you are assigned a bed, living space and other things. And when comrade Vedernikov and his team replaced Gusev, the construction of the sarcophagus had already begun. Do you understand? So I did not know many details or specific discussions. There was no exact, predetermined plan of action - our Government Commission had to improvise. This was dangerous and hard work because they had to go inside the block every time and search for the most suitable spots that would reliably diagnose the condition of reactor number 4. What if something is done to the reactor tomorrow and the whole thing is over? So the main work was undertaken by Abaghian Armen Artavazdovich, the Director of VNIIAES, the Institute of Atomic Energy Stations, that is presently under the Ministry of Atomic Energy and was under the Ministry of Energy earlier. The ministerial cadres grew up and acquired their own extensive engineering experience. And at that moment, Mikhail Sergeyevich asked me to write a personal letter to him. It went in one ear and out the other. I will mention only one example of his work. And local authorities were a part of the Government Commission. And then, from the position of Vladimir Mikhailovich Novikov, state that the level of device that we currently have is probably sufficient to ensure that Chernobyl does not happen again. This also was visible at the stations. And the most dangerous tasks during his term were to determine whether or not there was water inside the upper and lower bubblers, and in the rooms beneath the reactor hall because this was crucial. This meant that a kind of equilibrium would be achieved: the uranium oxide fuel pellets would melt and stop producing additional radioactive particles. Slowly, once the most powerful in the country, they began to lose the standard of modern equipment. Around 11 a.m. on the 26th of April, Boris Evdokimovich [Scherbina], after considering all our recommendations, decided to go ahead with the mandatory evacuation. They signed it the next day at 11 am. Was Shcherbina calling Moscow with you? He told me that he had issued appropriate orders, but I think those never got executed. Then with all these measures, by dropping all kinds of materials, we began to lower it and reduced it to 300 degrees in the end. But the main criminals are those leaders of energy in the 60s who despite the opinion of experts, and Soviet experts Say, at our institute, there is corresponding member Sidorenko Viktor Alekseyevich; he is now the Deputy Chairman of Gosatomenergonadzor. Then, I graduated from the Kurchatov Institute in the field of nuclear fuel reprocessing. God forbid, had any of them been implemented, they would only have complicated future work. It was led by the chairman. This work had only now begun. There were no new areas that I was responsible for. This general downfall of Soviet technology, the reasons for which can be discussed extensively and for a long time, it was simultaneously the beginning of Chernobyl. Boris Yevdokimovich Shcherbina was personally following the construction of this village, paying attention not only to the places to sleep after work, but also that there should be flowers, that the canteen worked as well as in any other part of the Soviet Union, and that the people felt comfortable there. Subsequently, there were a few days of active emission of radioactive particles, fuel, mainly due to the graphite burning. But at this time, my comrade postgraduate Viktor Konstantinovich Popov informed me that in Canada, Professor Bartlett had done excellent, staggering chemists work on obtaining a true xenon compound, one of the noble gases. Legasov: Sometime after the 2nd of May, they started to evacuate them. that happen there, from which I, of course, gain a perspective. Because of these differences a commission had to be formed and Anatoly Petrovich was asked to be an arbitrator to search for mistakes. For example, a number of advantages of this device are already known, such as, firstly, indeed, the possibility of constructing the device without using machine building industry capacitiesI mean the absence of a casing for the reactor; the possibility of refuelling the reactor while in operation allowed for having a high coefficient of power utilization in this reactorthe channel principle itself of this reactor; a number of other technical decisionspumps that were highly reliable in this reactor. And it still is the most common type of reactor in the world. The first, the most powerful emission was the one that threw millions of curies of radioactivity in the form of noble gases and iodine at high altitude. I was in a car with comrade Plyusch. The first decontamination efforts began even while the conglomeration processes inside reactor number 4 were ongoing. But apart from that, it was still and silent. By the characteristics of the explosion, by the glow, by the dispersion, it is clear that the system had a volumetric-detonation explosion. For example, the Politburo correctly decided to create a relevant nuclear organization within the Academy of Sciences; because there is no alternative, no competition. "[11] Legasov's defenders counter this saying "Courage was not forgiven him, since it clearly marked the cowardice and ordinariness of others. The next question arose when it became clear that the crater of the wrecked fourth block was exhausting a lot of radioactive gas. What they collected, what was published, of course, is of tremendous importance from a historical and archival point of view as live documentary material. The European industry will not survive without it. This convinced us that the fuel mass that was left after the explosion was in a sub-critical state. passed it. Only it was built by Finnish builders. All service providers, for example the firefighters, were also in constant contact with their Moscow counterparts. The report of minister Efim Pavlovich Slavsky began - and it was quite dull, standard and mundane. It was not clear what to do in it. There are various theories but those are only theories. I left the meeting immediately, called for a car and went to my university to find someone from the reactor team. Do you understand? There could have been such cases but I never saw anything like it. And here, at this moment, the main fundamental philosophical mistake in our approach to safety was made. And because this maximally-safe reactor and maximally-safe operation are not always a 100-per cent safe, then the philosophy of safety requires mandatory implementation of the third elementthe element that presumes that an accident will happen; and that radioactivity and other dangerous material will get out of the device. The staff began to age. 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. All this has to be thoroughly described because it is necessary to precisely write about the physical implication of each action. The knowledge existed; the experts, however, were not unanimous. We want to tell you the untold and hidden truth of the Chernobyl disaster. how long I was going, I do not know and flew to Vnukovo. That's probably what happened. 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. Anatoly Petrovich had a deputy for nuclear energy earlier, Eugeny Petrovich Ryazantsev. The first drops were, it seems, at the end of the day on the 27th. [1], In August 1986, he presented the report of the Soviet delegation at the special meeting of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna. There was no definite information. And for the shift workers that had to work in the 1st and 2nd blocks, a very nice village was constructed with all the needed amenities: with houses, with shops, with cultural facilities. Firstly, thanks to our reports and I was a reporter, they understood the situation, understood that this was not an average accident but a high-scale disaster that will have long-term consequences, and that enormous amounts of work would be required to continue the localisation of reactor number 4 as well as to decontaminate the area and to build a shelter for the wrecked 4th block. Numerous councils, interdepartmental or departmental, created an overall atmosphere of joint responsibility for the quality of the device. And most importantly, emphasize that nuclear sources, as any previous sources, are not only the bearer of energy but also the bearer of new technology. 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. So this issue was somewhat resolved. The idea of creating such an expert group and doing this work was mine. about the accident at the station "Trimayalen", Show that most likely the reason that led to the accident, has nothing to do with, the events in Chernobyl because of the fundamental difference in the design of, In Kiev, when we got out of the plane, the first thing that caught our eye was the, cavalcade of black government cars and the disturbing crowd of Ukrainian, leaders headed by the Chairman of the CM of Ukraine, Comrade. The fire and explosion was widely regarded as the most catastrophic. Lev Alekseyevich Voronin, who was in charge of the GC at that time, quickly understood me. I started this journey more than a year ago, worked with some great Russian translators to make Valery's words seem as close to life as possible. Legasov: which exist. Then we assumed that even if all the lead evaporates, we took the 30-kilometre zone and derived that everything [contamination in this zone] would turn out to be less than the permissible concentrations. Footage of Legasov's address does exist -- but perhaps not the whole address. So I went to the institute;but before I reached, my car phone rang and one of Scherbinas subordinates told me that as per a request by Silaev to the General Secretary, I needed to go back to Chernobyl because Velikhovs unilateral actions were, for some reason, worrying Ivan Stepanovich. These are the same industrial reactors that the Americans have. Three or four or up to ten tons of TNT, this is the maximum that can be said. This created, so to say, a stressful environment for those who were working there, who were doing the decontamination. 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