This meant that they did not have time to inform some of the people or that they had come from somewhere else. Scientific proposals not being limited by the influence of those in power, and full opportunity for the execution of such proposals that the Ministry liked from an engineering point of view, was [the] correct [way of operating]. There were no new areas that I was responsible for. Would we be breaking the law? This internal contamination had happened because of the ventilation intake. But then, in a conversation, he said that RBMK reactors are very dangerous. This is what I want to tell you today. This all had some psychological effect on Ivan Stepanovich Silaev and he authorized the works. The first assumption was that it is the internal contamination of the building. And the quality of produced Zirconium becomes better, as well as of the pipes made out of it, or else the operating states become better, and everyone calms down until the next thing happens. I was not with this group when they left. An appropriate team was gathered at night and approximately within three to four hours, they departed to the site. They had an accident worse than this but everything remained inside the containment. And teams had already been put in place beforehand. After creating the first nuclear facility, we then slowed down the development of the technology of their creation, the consideration of all the safety issues related to the operation of these devices, and later we started to rush. Thats why I understood the words of our Chairman of the Council of Ministers in a larger context, that it is not a feature of the development of nuclear energy that has come to this state, but a feature of the development of the national economy that has led to this. It needed a fight to, Speaking of the conversations with Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev. All these were some unusual questions that complemented nuclear energy. Earlier I had started to talk about how the work in the Government Commission (GC) was organized. But how they did it, how they made it happen, I still cannot imagine because I only know the result of their work. But these are such personal things. And you go into Skazochniy where you are assigned a bed, living space and other things. But apart from that, it was still and silent. This is the level of document preparation for a facility as serious as a nuclear station. And then to catch up, quickly, this option was proposed. And the city of Pripyat was considerably decontaminated by about the same time when the sarcophagus construction was ending. The upper reactor plate (nicknamed Yelena) that hermetized the reactor, was in an almost vertical position, slightly off kilter. But caesium and strontium, these emissions, they did spread to large areas. The degree of fuel enrichment, a number of other technical measures had to be taken to make controlling the reactor easier. Nevertheless Eugeny Pavlovich insisted on performing this work that is constructing a concrete bed under the reactor . [20][21] He had been involved in work on industrial safely with the GKNT (State Committee for Science and Technology), in which he had explored the risks involved in energy generation. "[11], I feel sick thinking about exactly what is most likely to happen to us in the near future [Major industrial accidents will happen] unless the necessary measures are taken. We want to tell you the untold and hidden truth of the Chernobyl disaster. And at the same time, England first and then the United States of America began to develop their energy sector, not as separate nuclear power plants but as a nuclear power industry. But the operational staff there is considerably smaller than in our stations. I am a radiochemist, that is, in the designing of reactors, for example, I am involved only from a position of being present at the board meetings to listen to the discussions, debates, etc. That was the main goal. So I just say what Im afraid of, and I already am afraid. But not everyone is in a hurry. Now it has merged with Minmash. Because many journalists, and in plays, write that the firemen needlessly stayed there for several hours and got exposed to high radiation doses as a result, etc. 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. So many discussions were had on this topic, so many surveys, so many measurements, and in the end, it turned out that the main source of contamination was the contamination on the roof of the 3rd block. They ran away. I have not seen a single group in the Soviet Union that raised and considered [the analysis of nuclear safety] with any degree of competence As for the RBMK reactor, you know, in reactor circles, it was considered a bad reactor. And if the operator is killed, falls ill or dies, then all these 211 rods will remain in place. As we were carrying out these operations to stabilise the temperature and create the filter layer, Boris Veneaminovich Gidaspov, a member of the Science Academy who had come to help the scientists that worked there (this was later, around the 10th of May), proposed an operation to suppress dust formation. He himself spent a lot of time on the site and under his leadership, the robots were created, tested and used. Valery Legasov's Tapes Tape 1 Tape 1 is Legasov explaining when he first heard there was a problem at Chernobyl and how he was forced to go to Chernobyl. But again, it would be wrong to place all the blame on the operator, because someone made the plan, someone scribbled on it, someone signed it, and someone did not coordinate it. It was led by the chairman. As I wrote in the proposals: the first perimeter at the station itself, a second one at a kilometre from the station, then 3-kilometre and 10-kilometre perimeters. And then I was pulled out with the permission of the party (I was already a communist since my time at the institute) for my postgraduate studies at the same Kurchatov Institute. Every time there was a need to get from one place to another, or to lay a hose, it was necessary to punch holes. First, to not touch it and leave it as is with its radiation, counting on nature itself to somehow recycle it all, that is, the needles, that are the most contaminated, would fall off, after which the needles could be gathered and buried, while the tree trunks, branches, all these would remain relatively clean. Rarely have any of us really spoken frankly and accurate about this. No careful monitoring of the instrument, no attention to the condition of the equipment between planned preventive maintenance. 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. These inaccuracies were accounted for, but that approach itself was not accurate. A. Ustynyuk said of Legasov: "His main quality, which set him sharply apart from all the great organizing scientists I knew, was his exceptional dedication to the cause. I dont think so. And everything around is clean. Rather, A.P.Alexandrov called Kokoshin, the Deputy Director of the Institute for USA and Canada (he had a doctorate, a very interesting young man), and asked him to write a counter-article debunking the author, that things are nothing like that, and that Soviet nuclear energy is at par with the West, etc. And finally, the third design mistake, which is hard to explain, was that all the numerous emergency protection systems were accessible to the station staff. As proposed by General Damiyanovich, a military centre was quickly established in the area surrounding the ChNPP to ensure that military specialiststhe military units in charge of decontamination, measurement, and any other operations that the army had to dowould not act randomly; by trial and error, but more consciously. Any approach to nuclear safety of a technologically complex and potentially dangerous device must have three elements. And quantitative estimates must be made for the processing and enrichment plants, similar to those that were made for the reactor. [38], His wife Margarita wrote a considerable number of articles and books to preserve his legacy. During thisthis may not be for publishing or maybe it isdo you know what caught my eye? No one could explain what had happened. From that moment on, a working friendship, which then grew into a deeper friendship, was formed with him and with other comrades. For that concrete supply had to be organized. We had to get in touch to solve some family issues, which of course remained unsolved. Early in the morning, Boris Eudokimovich Scherbina would gather the members of the GC. It was considered bad because of economic reasons. People had started sensing that. But magnesium oxide, of course, is not a metal; it conducts heat more effectively and without corroding, and the oxides it forms interfere with the oxygen concentration in the combustion zone, contributing to the cessation of combustion. Well, they didnt kick him out but made his work environment intolerable. All these issues were gradually solved during the design phase and were refined during the construction of the sarcophagus of reactor number 4. Adamovich: [UNINTELLIGIBLE QUESTION] and which system controls all this apart from the Academy? They had estimated a colossal plutonium spreading zone on the territory of the Soviet Union. Because of that our conversation was rather fragmented with long silences in between. For example, those remarkable photographs that are on my table, brought by Nikolai Nikolaevich Kuznetsov, where spruce has transitioned into pine form, that is, when spruce twigs start to branch in the same way as pines. I remember that the quality of engineers and other personnel running the stations was falling. We, as experts, were saying that. And subsequently, from September onwards, all the work on the site of the Chernobyl station and within the contaminated zone was the responsibility of the Government Commission. So, if there is no threat of receiving 25 rem, then no one has the right to carry out an evacuation. [1] One senior scientist wrote "Legasov was a clear representative of that scientific mafia whose political leanings instead of scientific leadership led to the Chernobyl accident. But the degree of risk in my own projects was quite high. Legasov: Uranium yes, the fuel itself. Further still, we must return to the fact that neither work nor reconnaissance robots were available in any country in the world. But it was reported in such a way that one of them died from physical trauma while the second from chemical burns. Because the philosophy of safety does not depend on what you are dealing with, be it a nuclear reactor, a biological facility where viruses propagate, a chemical plant or something else. During the initial days, all this hadnt been organized and this was shocking. There is no need to strike us as we can sort the issue out quickly. Prepperhub This is why the first job of the first team that went in was to start the reactor shutdown procedure of the 1st and 2nd blocks. Same as the Americans. . It was clear that during such migrations there was no command centre prepared from which it would be possible to organise the work in such difficult conditions. It was necessary to assess the condition of all the rooms and areas on the entire Chernobyl station, its surrounding areas and roads. After that, more and more thorough dosimetric measurements of the situation were carried out. At the same time, under my leadership, work developed in the field of safety of chemical production, which also poses a great danger. Right before he took his own life he recorded Chernobyl memoirs of Legasov and his heavy criticism of the establishment. And above that article, there was a lousy illustration, in which in front of a half-wrecked cooling tower, a young moustached Frenchman is trying to explain to a Russian bear how to build those cooling towers, while the bear has put a finger in his mouth and hardly understands that the quality of the cooling tower is as essential to the quality of a nuclear station as the reactor itself. The operative group led by Nikolai Ivanovich Ryzhkov was created and almost the entire Soviet industry was allocated to the disaster. Because there was hydrogen in the generators in the engine room; there was engine oil. [1] Spending four months in and around Chernobyl,[23] he received a high dose of radiation. That is, we considered it not as a competitor to nuclear energy but as an addition to it. Moreover, the designer to this day If the designers of the RBMK reactor or my colleagues from my own institute heard me now, they would tear me to pieces because they think that I dont understand the philosophy of safety. It has become clear now that none of the almost 50,000 civilians of Pripyat, that were not at the station after the accident, had received any considerable amount of radiation. But the full cycle of nuclear fuel safety must be added to those requirements. First, make the device itself, say, a nuclear reactor maximally safe. This is a very obvious scenario. 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. We drove through Chernobyl. But the author of this article, an American, criticized the French, said that they shouldnt be doing it (for political reasons, economic reasons). The self absorption was not taken into account as well as many other factors. We dropped dolomite there. Ivan Stepanovich Silayev, during his term, paid the most attention to the construction work arranging the concrete factories, arranging the shipment of concretebecause it was clear to him that the area around reactor number 4 had to be concreted as much as possible. This station had a proper training simulator where everyone had to undergo regular training, and the various situations that could arise at a reactor were simulated. But then, history came to such a state where science became subordinate to the Ministry. 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. Boris Yevdokimovich probably made a mistake but it is hard to say. Vorobyov Evgeny Ivanovich, the former Deputy Minister of Health, who was later removed, his responsibility was to determine the number of people exposed to radiation, their fate and everything that had to do with people. So if the temperature reached 2,500 degrees, then it would not be three per cent of radioactivity that gets released but the entire 100 per cent. How? The heating up could continue and some vertical movement of this fuel mass may occur. Legasov: Yes, the reactivity increases by 13 times every second whereas the rod takes five or six seconds to descend. They concerned possible areas of use of those components that are in a nuclear reactor. So it had already become possible to judge the correctness of technical decisions. For this, they used both statistically reliable samples that were gathered on the sitefollowed by analysis in the radiochemical laboratories that had been deployed in Chernobyl, and some samples were sent to the institutes, the Radio Institute or the Institute of Nuclear Energyand measurements of gamma fields made using helicopters. There is a lot of graphite, a lot of zirconium and water. These matters were discussed either in reactor units of the Ministry or in the science and technology councils of the respective departments. Of course there was a concern that if temperatures in the core were significantly higher than our estimates, say 1600-1700C, the lead would just evaporate and be carried out of the reactor, causing additional contamination of the surrounding areas and rendering this measure ineffective. Then a few words need to be said about the concepts for the sarcophagus construction. And there were difficult situations. So this process took two to three hours. This, altogether, is a serious question about how to, and to what extent, cover such large, very unpleasant and difficult events that affect and alarm almost the entire population of the country, and not merely our country. [5] While Legasov attempted to include all the top scientists in the new organization, many objected to Legasov being given a top leadership position, considering him an upstart. And so, it's not about the operators . So I was caught on the road and, after the Politburo, sent back again. An assessment of the situation was also needed, as well as considering the reactivation of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd blocks. Then the second option, a sarcophagus but with a concrete dome; why we rejected thatbecause the structure wouldnt withstand it. Because nothing has changed so far. And all this was not very coherent, not orderly, and did not present to me as a unified, smooth work process. Adamovich: And the people had already been evacuated. So this episode of installing the needle was described very elaborately and very, so to say, extensively. In these conditions, where on one side we had repetitive radioactivity measurements and on the other, the medics were limited by accepted order of things where the evacuation could only start when there was a risk of a person getting 25 biological roentgens per individual within some period of time. I passionately worked in this area with the involvement of external organisations. Valery Alekseyevich Legasov (Russian: ; 1 September 1936 27 April 1988) was a Soviet and Russian inorganic chemist and a member of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union. But the growth was not qualitative but quantitative. Around the same time when the fate of the 3rd block was decidedwell, because of such conditions its launch had been delayed from summer, for when it was planned, to autumnthe necessity of setting up and launching work on the 5th and 6th blocks was very keenly discussed. To date, it has generated more than half a billion roubles of income for the Government, which more than covers that cost of 25 million roubles for the projects that failed. But as you can understand from the talk, I am the director of my own department that supports the nuclear fuel cycle, that is, separating the isotopes, disposal of radioactivity My position is of an external observer, as it were, and also of a participant. This first meeting was simple and straightforward. [5], the information I had convinced me that not everything was well in the development of nuclear energy, as it seemed to me Science organizations began to weaken, not strengthen. Minatomenergo led the work on the preparations to launch the 1st and 2nd blocks and had already started to gradually make their way into the 3rd block to assess its condition. Comrade Voronin was replaced by Yury Nikitich Maslyukov, and during his time a lot of work was done to build new premises, new villages for the evacuees. The first part should be about what the Soviet Union has done in the international arenawhat material it has presented, whom it invited, who hosted, whose help it accepted and whose help it refused. They were very professional. I heard often that specialists, Kramerov Aleksander Yakovlevich in particular, while discussing these problems with Anatoly Petrovich Aleksandrov, made proposals to the [reactor] designer to change the accident protection system (APS), to improve the APS of this device, and they were not rejected. valery legasov tapes transcript. 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. I understood, I must tell you honestly, that I understood that the city was being evacuated permanently. And there is still so much to do! The most active advocate of nuclear energy safety in our country was Viktor Alekseyevich Sidorenko. The treatment of roads had begun, and the initial preparations started in front of reactor number 4 for the construction of the sarcophagus. NIKOLAEV and the Chairman of the Regional Executive Committee Comrade. This means that it applies, in no less degree but more, to the chemical facilities where we still have such ugliness, much more than in the nuclear industry. But I will tell you about the role of Anatoly Petrovich Alexandrov later as objectively as I can. of the USSR, Boris Evdokimovich SHCHERBINA, Chairman of the Bureau for the, Fuel and Energy Complex, was approved as the head of the Government, Commission. We had to introduce an element that would absorb heat due to chemical energy and transform, in the same way we boil tea, would take away the heat and so on. Under the mandatory condition of the most rigorous compliance with all regulations and such. Of course, all this reminded me of the the warwhich I remember from my childhood, and from accounts told by soldiersthat the logistics were certainly as, if not more, important than the work of those at the front lines, who worked on the decontamination itself, on measurements, diagnostics and various other things. In the first few days, on separate spots of the river basin, it must be said, activity of up to 10-8 curie per litre was detected in some water samples. But there was only one such telegram. That is why after the main problems had been solved (by main I mean protecting people from immediate danger and localizing the disaster itself), came the question of managing all these numerous groups of people who had gathered there at the suggestion of the Government Commission, according to the decisions of the Operative Group of the Politburo of the Central Committee, and stayed in ever-increasing numbers, along with their equipment, on the territory of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. But after some time, we calculated that the airflow is so high that injecting and diluting it with liquid nitrogen would not have any effect. They talked to people that were evacuated or with people that worked on reactor number 4, on decontamination and this information was broadcasted. I took all that I could carry with me and at 4 oclock, I was at the airport. After that, we started implementing this philosophy here. I cannot leave that unmentioned. Specialists exhibited confidence in these aspects. There was military acceptance of each piece of equipment, specially trained personnel, the highest requirements, etc. But the refueling itself took only 18-19 days, while for us it takes around a month and a half, and upto two months at times. Based on the wind rose, on dispersion, within a radius of 300 kilometres, with entry into China, all life will be destroyed. I liked him from the very beginning. Aym96/Wikimedia In all my life, it never occurred to me that I would have to start this part of my life. [5] During 1953, he proposed reforms to the Komsomol committee to address what he perceived as indifference and passivity of its members. It was necessary to carry out a survey of the territory, to continue this reconnaissance, and to check how radioactivity was being spread by the wind, by the vehicles. Every specialist who invents either an upgrade for an existing system or an entirely new system must prove the benefits of such innovation. It is hard for me to say what is going on there. This section cannot be concluded with only the obvious and clear things. Unfortunately, we came across this sloppiness quite often. In this reactor, 1,700 tons. Many residents later, in six or seven days, were drinking milk, Legasov: Well, somewhere. Thereafter, talk about the Novovoronezh station, the 1st block of which has already been built as a nuclear station designed to be operated in a continuous mode with a civilian crew, and describe the protection systems that have been used at that station. The staff began to age. In Soviet nuclear energy, precisely because of the pace that had to be quite high, because ten years had been lost, this third element, from my point of view, was criminally ignored. But what should those actions be? The medics did not sign the protocol. The Institute did acquire a taste of it. Well, either 30, 50 or 70 per cent of risk is certainly high. You know, sort of similar to Freon circulation in refrigerators. Probably, there were a few thousand suits, civilian, hanging on trees. Recently, all of us became concerned about the quality of training and readiness of the personnel who design, build and operate nuclear power stations, because the number of facilities had sharply increased, but the quality of the personnel involved in this process had likely decreased and was decreasing before our eyes. In this time, there would be an emission of radioactivity in aerosol form over large distances. So, this centre played a big role. [7], After 10 May, the situation had somewhat stabilized and Legasov was able to spend less time at the accident site but still frequently visited. And I supported him. Direct measurements were made in Pripyat. The correct decision was made during the time of comrade Vedernikov. The permission for evacuation is issued by the Ministry of Health of USSR; not the Council of Ministers or the Central Committee of the CPSU but the Ministry of Health. I am very concerned about this problem. As a result, a basis emerged that could be discussed widely, critiqued and supplemented. Basically, they proposed to drop explosives. There were not enough of these devices for everyone who were involved in the work. At this time, both the Army and the regional organisations allocated builders for the construction of villages in which the evacuees could live. So I just know that the next nuclear accident will be at the Armenian plant and the whole of Armenia will be affected. In this context, I want to state an opinion, of which I am fully convinced, but which, unfortunately, is not shared by my colleagues, and leads to friction between us, sometimes quite dramatically. Because people think they are doing a good thing by increasing the reliability of the device. Very basic, but it enabled keeping people's hands, and the food itself, safe from contamination. Yes. Then Pikalov came with his services. It seemed that not absolutely everyone was fully informed, because mothers with children were seen on the streets on the morning of the 27th. Chernobyl began, in my opinion, conditionally of course, in 1961; that is, in the very year when Gagarin flew into space or at the time of the last highest achievement of Soviet science and technology. I remembered that experts from my own institute were already used to what was happening during the construction of the nuclear power plants. They must be included. Valery Alekseyevich Legasov (Russian: ; 1 September 1936 - 27 April 1988) was a Soviet and Russian inorganic chemist and a member of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union. Eugeny Pavlovich Velihov who as it seemed was watching too much TV about the China syndrome, arrived with concerns which I reported to Rizhkov and Ligachev. soon it was necessary to literally fight for the correct implementation of every technological mode. As a customer, the Finnish side demanded, having studied international experienceand by this time, an international standard had developed requiring precisely the three elements of safety: a reliable reactor, reliable operation and mandatory containment. Chernobyl illustrates what those tapes presumably contain, which at times is far different from the official Soviet account. And the second part should be about how it will be necessary to inspect, control and mutually verify the level of safety in nuclear energy in the international plan. From these telegrams, I immediately realised that no one [in the world] was prepared for this kind of accident. Then Silayev called Gorbachev himself and asked that I go back. Because, in principle, with the correct configuration of graphite and with less volume inserted into the zone, this graphite inhibitor could, of course, hold the vapour coefficient within allowable quantities. Legasov was the one who pushed for honesty and evacuation of the town of Pripyat, at a time Soviet officials were trying to cover up the causes of the disaster. A decision was made to build the city of Slavutych because it was clear from the beginning that the shift work method could only be used temporarily at the nuclear power plant. Just in case it is useful when you write. The people there were active and interesting; many proposed a lot of unique solutions that triggered discussions. Well, because no one knew exactly what had happened. We would need around 2000 tons of lead to be dropped into the crater of the reactor. This blog is dedicaded to the text that comes from academician V.Legasov audio tapes which he recorded after the Chernobyl accident and not long before his death. He wasn't threatened or bullied by the KGB, he wasn't thrown out of his office or anythin. And it seemed to him that there was also a lot of fuel. Starting from the entrance to the station, its external signage, personnel training. Anyway Also, there was an episode that I will talk about later. In my opinion, it was unlikely. They were all worried, and they didnt have enough information; however, they all agreed that the situation was very bad. The station was under the supervision of our neighboring Ministry of Energy. So General Berdov, who had arrived from Kiev, ordered that all policemen will go to every flat and inform that no one should go outdoors until the next day and should stay at home. Do you understand? [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. Moreover, the measures that can be taken to prevent this from happening are known. The heat was absorbed and it broke down into magnesium oxide and carbon dioxide, which in turn reduced the supply of oxygen, as it is in firefighting. This standard consists of three elements. Valery Alekseyevich Legasov was born on September 1, 1936, in Tula, Russian SFSR, into a family of civil workers. And these non-traditional dynamic localisation methods for possible accidents at such facilities need to be thought about by us today, well, mainly by the Soviet community because it is our problem; although we would happily cooperate internationally for this task. From there, they monitored the crews that were above reactor number 4. I saw this; it bothered me. 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