History of Chernobyl. Chernobyl in the memoirs of eyewitnesses Chernobyl mystical stories
Today there are many books and literature about Chernobyl, Pripyat and the Chernobyl accident. Writers did not stand aside, creating fiction novels and popular science works about the largest man-made disaster in the history of mankind. Here are some of them
V. Akatov “Point of no return”
Notes of the liquidator. These are essentially the notes of a man who went through one of the greatest tragedies in the history of mankind - the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Just one year in the life of Pyotr Rusenko and at the same time his whole life, intertwined with the fate of the country and people. All the events described in the novel really took place, the characters are real people, the author of the notes changed only nine names. The reader will find in the Notes many previously unpublished information related to the Chernobyl tragedy, other accidents and nuclear disasters, well-known historical events, and will become acquainted with original versions of the reasons for their occurrence, including the collapse of the Soviet state.
Alexievich S. “Chernobyl prayer: chronicle of the future”
In Svetlana Alexievich’s book we are presented with the stories of real-life people, written in the blood of the heart, diluted with the burning tears of memoriesstories of people who went through all the horror of the disaster: evacuation, illness, loss of loved ones... Every resident of Chernobyl was tied to that event, and the book reflects not invented stories, but real events in the lives of real people.
Voznesenskaya Yu. “Star Chernobyl”
“And a great star fell from heaven, burning like a lamp, and fell on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water. The name of this star is “wormwood”...,” says the Apocalypse. 30 years ago, many remembered that the inconspicuous fragrant grass of our fields - wormwood - has another name: Chernobyl... The poignant novel by the famous Orthodox writer Yulia Voznesenskaya tells about the fate of three sisters, whose lives were crossed out by the Chernobyl disaster, and about love that wins fear, death and gives hope for the future. Written in the best traditions of realistic Russian literature, the novel includes documentary material taken by the author from Soviet newspapers, radio messages and television broadcasts, and is therefore valuable not only as a work of art, but also as historical evidence.
Gigevich V., Chernov O. “The waters have become bitter. Chronicle of the Chernobyl disaster"
In this chronicle book, the authors return to the tragic events of April 1986 in order to again comprehend its consequences in a variety of aspects - economic, psychological, technical, medical, social. The book summarizes the material collected by the authors from the beginning of the disaster to April 1990.The book tells how the state kept people in suspense in the first days and months after the Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident. It talks about what ordinary people had to endure, it talks about how sometimes people spread ridiculous rumors simply because the truth was hidden from them. The book also contains information about sources of radiation, the effect of radiation on the human body and nuclear energy in general.
Gubarev V. “Passion for Chernobyl”
Writer and journalist Vladimir Gubarev was a witness and participant in the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. The book contains official documents, interviews with direct participants in the liquidation of the consequences of the accident and their memories of life after the tragedy. According to the author, “this day in the history of our civilization became a turning point. He not only changed the destinies of many people, but also forced History to take a new path. On April 26, 1986, a giant radioactive cloud covered not only our country, Europe, Asia and America, but also the past, present and future of humanity. The passion for Chernobyl has been going on for a quarter of a century. They don’t leave everyone who has anything to do with what happened.”
A.S. Dyatlov. “Chernobyl. How it was"
Kazko V. (Kozko V.) “Save and have mercy on us, black stork”: Novel.
In a village forgotten by everyone, stained by the glow of Chernobyl, people continue to work, joke, live without fear, and hope. Yanka Kaganets also hopes - he is a conscientious man who loves his land. He knows that peace of mind will come for both him and his beloved Mary. When the question arose about the destruction of the grove, thinned by numerous deforestation, where the black stork listed in the Red Book lives, people seemed to wake up...
Kupny A. “Chernobyl. We are alive as long as we are remembered"
This is a book of memories. People who went through Chernobyl will themselves talk about their work, which we consider heroic. 12 stories about liquidating the consequences of an accident, about life and work in extreme conditions. At different times and to varying degrees, they came into contact with the Chernobyl disaster and the Shelter object. These are leaders, scientists, the first researchers of the destroyed block - “stalkers”.
Levanovich L. “Wind with the bitterness of wormwood” » ( « Wormwood Wind", "The Liquidator's Wife")
Based on a documentary basis, the stories tell how the accident affected the fate of ordinary people.
Medvedev G. “Nuclear tan”
The book by writer Grigory Medvedev includes three stories: “Nuclear Tanning”, “Power Unit” and “Chernobyl Notebook”.Documentary investigative stories that have become a fearlessly truthful confession. The author truthfully talks about the events of the first hours and days of the disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Writer and publicist, nuclear specialist, who at one time worked at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, personally acquainted with all the main participants in the events. Immediately after the accident, I was sent to Chernobyl and had the opportunity to learn a lot from fresh tracks and see with my own eyes. He gives many technical details, reveals the secrets of bureaucratic relations, talks about scientific and design miscalculations, about harmful pressure from authorities, about violations of publicity that brought enormous harm. The author shows the behavior and role of numerous participants in the drama, living, real people, with their shortcomings and advantages, doubts and weaknesses, delusions and heroism. Here is what the author writes about his work: “ The pain and remorse I experienced when I learned about the Chernobyl explosion were special. After all, for 10 years before Chernobyl I wrote novels and short stories on the atomic topic, trying to warn people. Now I had to write about Chernobyl as truthfully as possible, based on my experience as a nuclear power engineer and writer" After reading this book, you will get the opportunity to get an idea of the true scale of the tragedy, as well as the situation that has developed in nuclear safety years later.
Mirny S. “Living force. Diary of a liquidator"
Author– writer and screenwriter, scientist and expert on environmental disasters. A real participant in the liquidation of the Chernobyl disaster: in 1986, the author was the commander of a radiation reconnaissance platoon. This is a book about the liquidation of the man-made disaster at Chernobyl and the people who were directly involved in it. Despite the dramatic nature of the situation described in the book, it is written in an easy and accessible language. The novel's heroes emerge from difficult trials with dignity and new knowledge - balanced and unexpectedly optimistic.
Mirny S. “Liquidators. Chernobyl comedy"
Peaceful morning of April 27, 1986. Residents of the town of Pripyat are preparing for the May Day holidays, but at this time columns of buses are drawn into the city. The general evacuation of the Chernobyl Zone begins... He is yesterday’s graduate of the chemistry department, and now a radiation intelligence officer. She is a local resident, the first beauty, forced to cut off her luxurious hair. But the love that broke out between them turned out to be stronger than the explosion at the fourth power unit... The Chernobyl tragedy turned into a comedy - a funny and dramatic story about a real Zone where anyone can become a stalker! Even against your wishes...
Odinets M. “Chernobyl: days of testing”
Poems, essays, stories, excerpts from novels and stories, interviews. Collected together, these documentary and fictional works make up the contents of the collection “Chernobyl. Test days."The book is based on essays and reports by a Pravda correspondent from the scene of events - the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. They tell about the courage and heroism of those who took on the heat of the flames and the deadly breath of the reactor. In this case, special attention is paid to firefighters, employees of internal affairs bodies and other law enforcement agencies. It tells about the energetic and coordinated actions of representatives of Soviet and party bodies to eliminate the consequences of the accident, about the help of many thousands of people who responded sympathetically to the disaster. Interviews with prominent scientists highlight some important issues of man's relationship with the peaceful atom and the long-term consequences of the accident. A detailed chronicle of memorable events and the reaction of the international community to them is presented.
Orel E. “Black and white Chernobyl”
At the time of the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, Evgeniy Orel lived in Pripyat and worked in the city financial department. “Black and White Chernobyl” was written on the basis of the author’s impressions and is at the intersection of a documentary story and journalism, partly representing a cross-section of society in the mid-80s of the last century. The technical side of the disaster is almost not touched upon. Having given the title of the story the modest subtitle “Notes of an Everyman,” the author focuses on the psychological aspects of the post-accident period. Here there is decency, and dishonesty, and tragedy, and love, because such is life in its complexity and diversity.
Sirota L. “Pripyat syndrome”
This book has been waiting in the wings for 15 years. It all started with the script for the feature film “How to Save You, Son?”, according to which the shooting of a two-part film was planned in the early nineties. The film could not be made due to the crisis in the country, but the script remained and was later transformed into an autobiographical film story about the events in Pripyat on April 26-27, 1986, about the evacuation, about the fate of relatives and friends of the author - Pripyat resident Lyubov Sirota.The city woke up on a sunny morning, not yet knowing that in a few days these green streets would become a death zone. Irina was evacuated from Pripyat, and soon invisible death began to take away her friends and acquaintances. She experienced the human “exclusion zone”: the indifference of officials, the cynicism of official medicine... Irina begins to lose her sight. Weak, she learns about the terrible illness of her son, who can only be saved by an operation abroad - a miracle for which there is almost no hope left. But the woman does not back down. New trials and betrayal await her and the baby, which only faith will help them get through.
SopelnyakB."Chernobyl fault"
Rarely do anyone know these people by sight. But they are always remembered, as soon as a terrible disaster happens somewhere - a fire. And it doesn’t matter whether it’s a burning residential building, a factory floor, a nuclear power plant, or the endless taiga. On April 26, 1986, a power unit exploded at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and a strong fire started. A lot has been written about this tragedy, but not about the people who were the first to suffer the blow of the elements. The story “Chernobyl Fault” tells about what these unknown heroes were able to do.
Fishkin M. “The third angel sounded...”
There are legends that many clairvoyants predicted the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. But the earliest prediction probably dates back to biblical times. In "Revelation of St. John the Theologian” there are these words: “The third angel sounded his trumpet, and a great star fell from heaven, burning like a lamp, and fell on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water. The name of this star is Wormwood; and a third of the waters became wormwood, and many of the people died from the waters, because they became bitter.” Wormwood has a popular name - Chernobyl... This book is a true story about the relationships and behavior of people in extreme conditions of liquidation of the consequences of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident in the spring and summer of 1986, told by a participant in the events.
Shamyakin I. “Evil Star”
About how the Chernobyl tragedy affected the lives of ordinary people. The action in the novel takes place in one of the districts of the Gomel region.In the center is the image of the chairman of the district executive committee, Vladimir Pylchenko, on whose shoulders falls the burden of eliminating the consequences of the accident, the fate of his family: the youngest son Gleb, an engineer at a nuclear power plant, the eldest Boris, an officer-pilot, having visited Afghanistan twice, dies. A mother's heart can't stand it...The novel begins very symbolically with the scene of the wedding preparations and the celebration itself, but unfortunately the happiness of the newlyweds was very short-lived. The groom, who worked as an engineer at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, breaks away from the second day of the wedding celebration when he finds out that something happened at the plant. The fate of all the heroes of the novel will not be the best, but the most important tests will have to be endured by the newlyweds.
Shcherbak Yu. “Chernobyl. Documentary narration"
The documentary narrative “Chernobyl” is conceived by the author as an artistic study of the causes of the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. " For three years now I have been living and suffering from Chernobyl, trying to understand the causes of the accident and its consequences, constantly thinking about the heroes and criminals of Chernobyl, about its victims - past and future; I correspond, meet with many people involved in this tragedy, listen to and write down more and more new stories. Sometimes I arrogantly think that I already know everything or almost everything about the accident - but no, in the story of a stranger or in a letter that came from afar, an unexpected, piercing detail suddenly flashes, another new drama arises, a Chernobyl plot, seemingly so familiar , makes another sharp turn". The book contains the voices of peasants and academics, nuclear power plant operating personnel and firefighters, military specialists and priests. Based on the stories of eyewitnesses, the picture of how the accident unfolded was reconstructed for the first time; numerous unknown publications from Western countries were used in the narrative. press about the Chernobyl events. He was the first to tell the truth. For the first time, it was he who mentioned the terrible tragedy during the construction of the sarcophagus: a helicopter crashed. “It’s terrible... the helicopter collapsed and fell apart. It just got caught on the crane cables. PEOPLE died." There are books that you believe. You shudder in horror, but you read it and can’t put it down. Human destinies float before your eyes. And it seems that people are no longer strangers at all, but close ones, family. And there is no place for the usual, everyday indifference.
Yavorivsky V. "Wormwood"
The author worked as a correspondent at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Based on his essays from Chernobyl, the novel “Mary with Wormwood at the End of the Century” was written. Yavorivsky's novel is almost entirely a work of fiction. This is what the author put as an epigraph to it: “Telling about these events is not enough. So I'm trying to help you see them. Hence the style. Perhaps this is a video novel.” The action takes place in a young town of nuclear power engineers and in a village located in a 30-kilometer zone. The writer tells us about the life of his characters before the tragedy, and how it changed after.
Yaroshinskaya A. “Chernobyl. 20 years later. Crime without punishment"
For the previous investigative book “Chernobyl. Top Secret" Alla Yaroshinskaya was awarded the "alternative Nobel Prize" in 1992. In her new book, Alla Yaroshinskaya publishes many previously secret Chernobyl materials: documents of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee, shockingly cynical correspondence between medical and party officials, documents of the “Chernobyl resistance” to the authorities, research results of independent scientists. Nine million people in Belarus, Ukraine and Russia have already suffered to one degree or another from a nuclear disaster. But this number is far from final - Chernobyl continues to threaten each of us.
G. Medvedev: « I walk along the graves, stopping for a long time near each one. I put flowers on the gravestones. Firefighters and six nuclear operators died in terrible agony between May 11 and May 17, 1986. They received the highest doses of radiation, took the most radionuclides inside, their bodies were highly radioactive, and, as I already wrote, they were buried in sealed zinc coffins. This was what the sanitary and epidemiological station required, and I thought about it with bitterness, because the earth was prevented from doing its last work - turning the bodies of the dead into dust. Damn nuclear age! Even here, in the eternal human exodus, thousand-year-old traditions are being violated. You can’t even bury it, humanly bury it. This is how it turns out... And yet I say to them: peace be with you. Sleep well. Your death shook people up, they moved at least an inch away from hibernation, from blind and gray diligence... Let us bow our heads before them - the martyrs and heroes of Chernobyl. So what is the main lesson of Chernobyl? The most important thing is the feeling of the fragility of human life, its vulnerability. Chernobyl demonstrated the omnipotence and powerlessness of man. And he warned: do not revel in your omnipotence, man, do not joke with him. For you are the cause, but you are also the effect. Ultimately, this is what torments us the most: those chromosome strands cut by radiation, killed or mutilated genes, they have already gone into the future. Gone, gone...»
I have been to the Chernobyl exclusion zone many times and brought back impressions and photographs. I can say that from the inside everything looks completely different from how it appears after reading articles or watching videos. Chernobyl is completely different. And every time it’s different.
On the thirtieth anniversary of the worst man-made accident in the history of the Earth, I am publishing a selection of my best photographs about Chernobyl. After this series of materials you will look at Chernobyl with different eyes.
Posts are available by clicking on the title or photo.
A post-retrospective look at the life of a young nuclear power plant worker in 1985. In spring Pripyat, even now, the same atmosphere of the city of youth, spring and hope that was there in the early eighties has been preserved.
Try to see Pripyat exactly like this.
In Pripyat it is now forbidden to enter buildings, but I managed to walk through one abandoned city house. From the material you can find out what typical apartments of Pripyat residents looked like, what was left in them after the work of disinfectors and looters, as well as what the entrance looks like after almost thirty years of the power of nature.
Pripyat has become a symbol of the Chernobyl tragedy; the whole world knows about this city. But at the site of the passage of the nuclear wind there were dozens more small towns and villages, which no one remembers now. The village of Kopachi found itself at the epicenter of a nuclear tragedy and was so contaminated that it was completely destroyed - houses were destroyed by bulldozers and military IMRs and covered with earth.
On the periphery of the village, only the building of a kindergarten remains, where you can still see traces of pre-accident life and childhood in the mid-eighties.
Pripyat sixteen-story buildings are perhaps the most famous residential buildings in the city. There were exactly five such houses in Pripyat. It is now not very safe to enter the sixteen-story buildings with coats of arms that are located on the main square of the city, but it is quite possible to visit the buildings on the Street of Heroes of Stalingrad - I just visited one of them.
The post contains a story about the house, its apartments and views of Pripyat and the Sarcophagus from above.
How and with what did they fight the consequences of a nuclear disaster? What equipment helped people in the fight against radiation pollution, how did they clean the areas adjacent to the Chernobyl nuclear power plant? Most of the “dirty” special equipment of the liquidators has long been buried in special burial grounds, but some can still be seen in a small museum near the city of Chernobyl. This is the story in the post.
Many people do not know this, but the city of Chernobyl now continues to live its very peculiar life - from an ordinary regional town it has turned into a closed city for the life of modern Chernobyl workers. Residential buildings have been turned into dormitories for workers who live there on a rotational basis for several months, from time to time traveling to the mainland. The city has a curfew, almost like in wartime.
I managed to get into one of the dormitories of modern disaster liquidators and see how they live. There is a story about all this in the article about Chernobyl apartments.
What does the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant look like now? Is it true that mutant catfish live in the cooling pond?
Is it true. Read about this in the post about a walk around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant :)
The Thirty Kilometer Exclusion Zone around the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant is known not only for cities and villages. There are also amazing military facilities there - for example, the famous ZGRLS "Duga", also known as "Chernobyl-2" - a once top-secret antenna complex designed for long-range monitoring of nuclear missile launches by a "potential enemy".
Usually at the Chernobyl-2 facility only the antennas themselves are shown, since many of the interior spaces of the complex are even now considered secret. I managed to get into several military barracks and also
premises where top-secret equipment was previously located.
This post contains a story about the interior of the military complex - something that will never be shown to you on any excursion.
A question that worries many people is what is the current level of radiation in Chernobyl? On one of my trips to the ChEZ, I took a customized dosimeter with me and took detailed measurements of radiation in different parts of the Zone, including Chernobyl, Pripyat and the Chernobyl nuclear power plant itself. There is a detailed photo story about this in the post.
The city of Slavutich became the second life of the city of Pripyat. There will never be life in Pripyat itself, but its former residents had the strength to start all over again. The post is about how spring always defeats winter, and life defeats death.
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"Pripyat, April 26, 1986, 3 hours 55 minutes, Lenina St., 32/13, apt. 76. I was woken up by a phone call. I waited for the next signal. No, I didn’t dream. I walked to the phone. Vyacheslav Orlov’s voice was on the phone , my boss - deputy head of reactor shop No. 1 for operation.
Arkady, hello. I give you Chugunov’s command: all commanders urgently arrive at the station in their workshop.
My heart ached with anxiety.
Vyacheslav Alekseevich, what happened? Anything serious?
I don’t really know anything myself, they said it was an accident. Where, how, why - I don’t know. I’m now running to the garage to get the car, and at 4.30 we’ll meet at the Rainbow.
Got it, I'm getting dressed.
He hung up the phone and returned to the bedroom. There was no sleep. A thought came to mind: “Marina (wife) is now at the station. They are waiting for the fourth unit to shut down to conduct an experiment.”
He quickly got dressed and chewed a piece of bread with butter as he walked. He ran out into the street. We meet a pair of police patrols with gas masks (!!!) over their shoulders. I got into Orlov’s car and drove out onto Lenin Avenue. To the left, from the medical unit, two ambulances rushed out at breakneck speed under blue flashing lights and quickly went ahead.
At the intersection of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant - Chernobyl road - police with a walkie-talkie. A request about our persons, and again Orlov’s Moskvich picks up speed. We broke out of the forest, all the blocks were clearly visible from the road. We look at both... and don’t believe our eyes. Where the central hall of the fourth block (TsZ-4) should be, there is a black hole... Horror... There is a red glow from inside TsZ-4, as if something is burning in the middle. It was later that we learned that the graphite of the reactor core was burning, which at a temperature of 750 degrees. C burns very well in the presence of oxygen. However, at first there was no thought that the reactor gasped. This could never have occurred to us.
4 hours 50 minutes ABK-1. We arrived at ABK-1. We almost ran into the lobby. At ABK-1 there is a vehicle of the city party committee, at the entrance to the civil defense bunker there are workers (mostly commanders) of all workshops. In the bunker, the director of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, Viktor Petrovich Bryukhanov, is on the phones; the chief engineer Fomin is not there.
We ask. They answer: an explosion on the fourth block at the moment of shutdown. This is already clear. Nobody knows anything in detail. The fire that started was extinguished: on the roof of the turbine hall and the roof of TsZ-3 - by the fire brigade, inside the turbine hall - by shift personnel of the 5th shift of the turbine shop. All possible work is being carried out to prevent re-ignition: oil is drained from the oil systems into tanks, hydrogen is displaced from generators N7 and 8.
Igor Petrovich Aleksandrov, Marina’s boss, flashed by. According to him, she is not on the list of those removed (victims) from the station territory. There was no more anxiety, because I understood that it shouldn’t be on the 4th block, but what if?! Almost at a run he rushed to the sanitary inspection room. We quickly changed into white - at the crossing I saw Sasha Chumakov, Marina’s partner. He immediately said that Marina was changing clothes.
A stone has fallen from my soul.
We quickly reached the premises of the shift supervisor of the first block. They don’t know what happened. We heard two dull explosions. Both RC-1 units carry the rated load. There are no equipment failures. All work on the reactor and systems has been stopped. Operating mode - with increased vigilance and attention. I looked into the TsZ-2. The people are on the ground. Calm, although alarmed, - the radiological hazard alarm is screaming in the hall. The armored doors of the TsZ-2 are battened down.
A call from the shift supervisor of reactor shop-1 (NS RC-1) Chugunov. A wonderful person, I will say about him more than once. Chugunov has just returned from the 4th block. Things seem to be rubbish. High background everywhere. Devices with a scale of 1000 microroentgens per second are off scale. There are gaps and a lot of ruins.
Chugunov and the deputy chief engineer for operation of the 1st stage (i.e., 1st and 2nd units), Anatoly Andreevich Sitnikov, together tried to open the shut-off valve of the reactor cooling system. The two of them couldn't "rip it off". It's tight.
Healthy, strong guys needed. But there are no reliable ones at block board-4 (MSC-4). The blockers are already running out of steam. To be honest, it's kind of scary. We open the emergency complex of “personal protective equipment”. I drink potassium iodide with water. Ugh, what disgusting! But we have to. Orlov feels good - he took potassium iodide in a tablet. We dress in silence. We put plastic shoe covers on our feet, double gloves, and “petals.” We take documents and cigarettes out of our pockets. It's like we're going on reconnaissance mission. They took a miner's lantern. We checked the light. "Petals" are put on and tied. Helmets on heads.
Remember their names. The names of those who went to help their comrades in trouble. I went without orders, without any receipt, without knowing the true dose situation. Having acted as professional, human decency, and the conscience of a communist suggested:
Chugunov Vladimir Alexandrovich, member. CPSS, head of the reactor operation department.
Orlov Vyacheslav Alekseevich, member. CPSU, deputy head of the reactor operation department.
Nekhaev Alexander Alekseevich, member. CPSU, senior mechanical engineer RC-1.
Uskov Arkady Gennadievich, member. CPSU, Art. Operations engineer RC-1.
Maybe it was written too loudly and immodestly. I am absolutely sure that the motives for helping were the most disinterested and lofty. And maybe there’s no need to remember our names. Maybe the high commission will say: “Why did you go there, huh???”
6 hours 15 minutes, Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, corridor 301. We went out into the corridor and moved towards the 4th block. I'm a little behind. On the shoulder there is a “breadwinner” - a special fitting to increase the leverage when opening the valve.
Opposite Control Room 2 is the head of the decontamination workshop, Kurochkin. In overalls, helmet, boots. There are gas mask and bag straps criss-crossed on the chest. Equipment - even now for battle. He paces the corridor nervously. Back and forth... Why is he here? Unclear…
We moved to the territory of the 3rd and 4th blocks and looked at the radiation safety control panel. Shift supervisor Samoilenko is at the entrance. I asked him about individual dosimeters.
What dosimeters?! Do you know what the background is?
The friend seems to be in shock. Everything is clear with him. I tell him:
We went to control room-4. Do you know the dosage situation?
He doesn't listen to us anymore. The man is deeply confused. And behind the shields they swear at each other: his boss V.P. Kaplun and his deputy G.I. Krasnozhen. From the flow of obscenities it is clear that they do not have dose control devices for a solid background. And devices with a scale of 1000 microroentgen/sec. - minuscule. It's a funny situation, to say the least.
In front of the control room-4 itself, the suspended ceiling has collapsed, and water is pouring from above. Everyone ducked down and passed. The door to control room-4 is wide open. Let's go. A. A. Sitnikov sits at the block shift supervisor’s desk. Nearby is NSB-4 Sasha Akimov. Technological diagrams are laid out on the table. Sitnikov, apparently, is not feeling well. He dropped his head on the table. He sat for a while and asked Chugunov:
Never mind.
And I’m starting to feel nauseous again (Sitnikov and Chugunov had been on the block since 2 a.m.!).
We look at the instruments of the SIUR console. There's nothing to remember. The SIUR remote control is dead, all devices are silent. The ringing device is not working. Nearby is SIUR, Lenya Toptunov, a thin, young guy with glasses. Confused, depressed. Stands silently.
The phone is constantly ringing. A group of commanders decides where to supply water. It's decided. We supply water through drum separators to the release pipes of the main circulation pumps to cool the core.
7 hours 15 minutes We moved in two groups. Akimov, Toptunov, Nekhaev will open one regulator. Orlov and I, like big guys, will stand on the other. Sasha Akimov takes us to his place of work. We went up the stairs to level 27. We jumped into the corridor and dived to the left. Somewhere ahead steam is wafting. Where? I can not see anything. There is one miner's lantern for everyone. Sasha Akimov brought Orlov and me to the place, the regulator showed. Returned to his group. He needs a flashlight. Ten meters from us there is a torn open doorway without a door, there is enough light for us: it is already dawn. The floor is full of water, water is gushing from above. A very uncomfortable place. We work with Orlov without interruption. One turns the steering wheel, the other rests. Work is going briskly. The first signs of water consumption appeared: a slight hiss in the regulator, then noise. The water has started flowing!
Almost simultaneously I feel water entering my left shoe cover. Apparently it got caught somewhere and tore it. Then I didn’t deign to pay attention to this little detail. But later it turned into a 2nd degree radiation burn, which was very painful and did not heal for a long time.
We moved towards the first group. Things are not important there. The regulator is open, but not completely. But Lena Toptunov feels bad - he is vomiting, Sasha Akimov can barely hold on. Helped the guys get out of this gloomy corridor. Back on the stairs. Sasha still vomited - apparently not for the first time, and that’s why it’s just bile. The “breadwinner” was left outside the door.
7 hours 45 minutes The whole group returned to control room-4. They reported that water was supplied. Just now we relaxed, I felt that my whole back was wet, my clothes were wet, my left shoe cover was squelching, the “petal” was wet, it was very difficult to breathe. The “petals” were immediately changed. Akimov and Toptunov are in the toilet opposite - the vomiting does not stop. The guys urgently need to go to the first aid station. Lenya Toptunov enters control room-4. He was all pale, his eyes were red, the tears had not yet dried. It was twisting him hard.
How do you feel?
It's okay, I'm already feeling better. I can still work.
That's it, you've had enough. Let's go to the first aid station together with Akimov.
It's time for Sasha Nekhaev to turn in his shift. Orlov points him to Akimov and Toptunov:
Come along with the guys, help them get to the first aid station and come back to hand over your shift. Don't come here.
The loudspeaker announces the gathering of all shop managers in the civil defense bunker. Sitnikov and Chugunov leave.
Just now I noticed: “fresh people” have already arrived at Control Room-4. All the “old” ones have already been sent. Reasonable. No one knows the dosage situation, but vomiting indicates a high dose! I don’t remember how many.
9 hours 20 minutes Replaced the torn shoe cover. We took a break and then moved forward again. Again along the same stairs, the same mark 27 Our group is now led by Akimov’s replacement, NSB Smagin. Here are the valves. Dragged from the heart. Again I am paired with Orlov, together we begin to “undermine” the valves with the full power of our muscles. Slowly things progressed.
There is no sound of water. The mittens are all wet. Palms are burning. We open the second one - there is no sound of water.
We returned to control room-4 and changed the “petals”. I really want to smoke. I look around. Everyone is busy with their own business. Okay, I’ll survive, especially since there’s absolutely no point in removing the “petal.” The devil knows what is in the air now, what you will inhale along with tobacco smoke. And we don’t know the dosage conditions for control room-4. It’s a stupid situation - at least one “dose doctor” (dosimetrist) would run in with the device! Scouts, fuck them! I just thought - and then the “dose” came in. Somewhat small, depressed. I tried on something and off I went. But Orlov quickly caught him by the collar. Asks:
Who are you?
Dosimetrist.
Once a dosimetrist, measure the situation and report, as expected, where and how much.
"Dozik" is back again. Measures. You can see by the face that you want to “get out of here” as quickly as possible. He names numbers. Wow! The device is off scale! The fonit is clearly from the corridor. Behind the concrete columns of the control room the dose is lower. Meanwhile, the “dose” escaped. Jackal!
He looked out into the corridor. It's a clear sunny morning outside. Towards Orlov. He waves his hand. From the corridor we go into a small room. There are shields and remote controls in the room. The glass on the windows is broken. Without leaning out of the window, we carefully look down.
We see the end of the 4th block... Everywhere there are piles of rubble, torn off slabs, wall panels, twisted air conditioners hanging on wires... Water is gushing from the torn fire mains... It is immediately noticeable - gloomy dark gray dust is everywhere. There is also a lot of rubble under our windows. Fragments of a regular square cross-section stand out noticeably. That’s why Orlov called me to look at these fragments. This is reactor graphite!
We haven’t yet had time to assess all the consequences, we return to control room-4. What we saw is so scary that we are afraid to say it out loud. We're calling the station's deputy chief engineer for science, Lyutov, to see it. Lyutov looks where we are pointing. Silent. Orlov says:
This is reactor graphite!
Come on, guys, what kind of graphite is this, this is “assembly-eleven”.
It is also square in shape. Weighs about 80 kg! Even if it is "assembly-eleven", radish horseradish is not sweeter. It was not with the holy spirit that she flew off the reactor “penny” and ended up on the street. But this, unfortunately, is not an assembly, dear Mikhail Alekseevich! As a deputy for science, you need to know this as well as we do. But Lyutov does not want to believe his eyes, Orlov asks Smagin standing next to him:
Maybe you had graphite here before? (We are also clinging to straws.)
No, all the subbotniks have already passed. It was clean and orderly; not a single graphite block had been here until tonight.
Everything fell into place.
We've arrived.
And above these ruins, above this terrible, invisible danger, the generous spring sun shines. The mind refuses to believe that the worst thing that could happen has happened. But this is already a reality, a fact.
* Reactor explosion. 190 tons of fuel, in whole or in part, with fission products, with reactor graphite, reactor materials were thrown out of the reactor shaft, and where this muck is now, where it settled, where it settles - no one knows yet! *
We all silently enter control room-4. The phone rings, Orlov is called. Chugunov feels bad, he is sent to the hospital. Sitnikov is already in the hospital. The management of the workshop is transferred to Orlov as the senior official.
10:00 a.m. Orlov is already in the rank of i. O. the head of RC-1 receives the go-ahead to leave for control room-3.
We quickly leave towards the main control room-3. Finally we see a normal dosimetrist. Warns not to approach the windows - the background is very high. We already understood without him. How many? They don’t know it themselves, all the devices are going through the roof. Devices with high sensitivity. And now what is needed is not sensitivity, but a large measurement limit! Oh, shame...
We are very tired. Almost five hours without eating, at dray work. We go to control room-3. The third unit was urgently shut down after the explosion; emergency cooling is underway. We go to our “home” - to the first block. There is already a portable sanitary lock at the border. I immediately noted that our sanitary lock is from RC-1. Well done guys, they work well. Without touching with his hands, he took off the shoe covers. I rinsed my soles and dried my feet. Orlov showed signs of vomiting. Run to the men's room. I don’t have anything yet, but it’s somehow disgusting. We crawl like sleepy flies. Strength is running out.
We reached the room in which the entire command staff of RC-1 was sitting. I took off the petal. They gave me a cigarette and lit it. Two puffs and nausea rose in my throat. He put out the cigarette. We are all sitting there wet, we urgently need to go change clothes. But to be honest, we don’t need to change clothes, but go to the first aid station. I look at Orlov - he is sick, and so am I. And this is already bad. We probably look very tortured, because no one asks us anything. They said it themselves:
It's rubbish. The reactor has collapsed. We saw fragments of graphite on the street.
We go to the sanitary inspection room to wash and change clothes. This is where it broke through for me. It turned inside and out every 3-5 minutes. I saw Orlov slam shut some magazine. Yeah... "Civil defense", understandable.
Well, what did you read there?
Nothing good. Let's go to the first aid station to give ourselves up.
Later, Orlov said what was written in that journal: the appearance of vomiting is already a sign of radiation sickness, which corresponds to a dose of more than 100 rem (roentgen). The annual norm is 5 rem."
In the bunker
Sergei Konstantinovich Parashin, former secretary of the party committee of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant (now S.K. Parashin is the shift supervisor of unit N1 of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, chairman of the plant’s labor council):
“They called me about half an hour after the accident. In a choking voice, the telephone operator told my wife (I was asleep) that something very serious had happened there. Judging by the intonation, my wife immediately believed it, so I quickly jumped up and ran out into the street. I saw a car coming. with the headlights on, I raised my hand. It was Vorobiev, the chief of staff of the station's civil defense. He was also raised by the alarm.
At about 2.10-2.15 at night we were at the station. When we arrived, there was no longer a fire. But the very change in the block configuration brought me to the appropriate state. We went into the office of the director of the nuclear power plant Bryukhanov. Here I saw the second secretary of the Pripyat city committee, Veselovsky, there was the deputy director for the regime, me and Vorobiev.
When we got into the office, Bryukhanov immediately said that we were transferring to control the bunker. He apparently realized that an explosion had occurred, and therefore gave such a command. This is according to civil defense instructions. Bryukhanov was depressed. I asked him, "What happened?" - "Don't know". He was generally a man of few words at ordinary times, but that night... I think he was in a state of shock, inhibited. I myself was in a state of shock for almost six months after the accident. And another year - in complete decline.
We moved to the bunker, located here, under the ABK-1 building. This is a low room filled with office tables and chairs. One table with telephones and a small remote control. Bryukhanov sat down at this table. The table was placed poorly - next to the front door. And Bryukhanov was, as it were, isolated from us. People walked past him all the time, the front door slammed. And then there's the fan noise. All the department and shift managers and their deputies began to flock in. Chugunov and Sitnikov arrived.
From a conversation with Bryukhanov, I realized that he called the regional committee. He said: there is a collapse, but it is not yet clear what happened. Dyatlov is sorting things out there... Three hours later, Dyatlov came, talked to Bryukhanov, then I sat him down at the table and started asking questions. “I don’t know, I don’t understand anything.”
I'm afraid that no one reported to the director that the reactor had been blown up. Not a single deputy chief engineer gave the wording “the reactor exploded.” And chief engineer Fomin did not give it. Bryukhanov himself went to the area of the fourth block - and also did not understand this. Here's the paradox. People did not believe in the possibility of a reactor explosion; they developed their own versions and obeyed them.
I also formulated for myself what happened there. I assumed that the separator drum had exploded. The entire ideology of the first night was built on the fact that everyone was sure that it was not the reactor that exploded, but something that was not yet clear.
There were about thirty to forty people in the bunker. There was noise and commotion - everyone was negotiating with their workshop on their own telephone. Everything revolved around one thing - supplying water to cool the reactor and pumping out the water. Everyone was busy with this work.
The second secretary of the Kyiv regional committee, Malomuzh, arrived at the station somewhere between seven and nine o’clock in the morning. He arrived with a group of people. The conversation turned to the need to draw up a single document that would go through all channels. Either Bryukhanov instructed me, or I volunteered myself - it’s hard to say now - but I took on the task of drawing up the document.
I thought that I seemed to be in control of the situation. I started writing this paper. I did it poorly. Then another one took over. Wrote a draft. The five of us agreed - this way and that. It indicated the collapse of the roof, the level of radiation in the city was still low at that time, and it was said that further study of the problem was underway.
And before that there was such an unpleasant thing. It's hard for me to explain now. The head of civil defense, Vorobyov, with whom we arrived, came up to me a couple of hours later and reported: he drove around the station and discovered very large radiation fields near the fourth block, about 200 roentgens. Why didn’t I believe him? Vorobyov is by nature a very emotional person, and when he said this, it was scary to look at him... And I didn’t believe it. I told him: “Go prove it to the director.” And then I asked Bryukhanov: “How?” - "Badly". Unfortunately, I did not bring the conversation with the director to an end and did not demand a detailed answer from him.
While sitting in the bunker, did you think about your wife and children?
But do you know what I thought? If I had fully known and imagined what happened, I would, of course, have done something wrong. But I thought that the radiation was due to the release of water from the separator drum. I started sounding the alarm too late - on the second night, when the reactor caught fire. Then I started calling the city committee and saying: we need to evacuate the children. Only then did it dawn on me that I urgently needed to evacuate. But by that time a lot of high officials had already arrived in the city. The director was not invited to the meeting of the Government Commission, no one asked him. The arrival of the bosses had a great psychological effect. And they are all very serious - these high ranks. They inspire confidence in themselves. Like, here come people who know everything, understand everything. Only much later, when I talked to them, did this belief pass. We didn't make any decisions. All the right and wrong decisions were made from the outside. We, the staff, did something mechanically, like sleepy flies. The stress was too great, and our belief that the reactor could not explode was too great. Mass blinding. Many see what happened, but don't believe it.
And now I am haunted by a feeling of guilt - for the rest of my life, I think. I performed very poorly that night in the bunker. I had to say in court that I was a coward, otherwise I could not explain my behavior. After all, it was I who sent Sitnikov, Chugunov, Uskov and others to the fourth block. This tragedy hangs over me. After all, Sitnikov died... They ask me: “Why didn’t you go to the fourth block yourself?” Then I went there, but not that night... What can I say? No, I don’t think I chickened out. I just didn’t understand it then. But I know this alone with myself, but how can I explain it to people? Like, everyone was there, everyone was irradiated, and you, my dear, are standing alive in front of us, although you should...
And everything is explained simply. I myself didn’t know the fourth block. Worked on the first one. If this had happened on the first one, I would have gone myself. And here sitting in front of me is Chugunov, the former head of the workshop, and Sitnikov. Both worked there just six months ago. I tell the director: “We need to send them, no one will understand better than them, no one will help Dyatlov.” And they both went. And even they - the most, most honest people who were not responsible for the explosion, even they, when they returned, did not say what happened there... If Sitnikov had understood what happened, he would not have died. After all, he is a highly professional.
I’m trying to justify myself, but it’s just a weak excuse..”
Nikolai Vasilyevich Karpan (now N.V. Karpan deputy chief engineer of the station for science), deputy head of the nuclear physics laboratory.
“The day before the accident, I returned from Moscow, I was not at work. I found out about the accident at seven o’clock in the morning when a relative from Chernobyl called. She asked what happened at the station? They told her terrible things about some kind of explosion. I assured her, that there could be no explosion. I called the station in the evening and found out that the fourth unit was being shut down. And before shutting down, they usually do some kind of work related to opening safety valves and releasing a large amount of steam into the atmosphere. This creates noise effects. I calmed her down, but some kind of alarm remained. I started calling the station - the fourth block. None of the phones answered. I called the third block - they told me that there was practically no central hall above the third and fourth blocks. I went outside and saw... the changed contours of the second stage.
Then I called my boss and asked if he had made an attempt to get into the station? “Yes, but I was detained by the Interior Ministry posts.” The head of the nuclear safety department... was not allowed into the station! My boss and I went out to a small round square before leaving the city and decided to hitch a ride. We saw the head of the adjustment shop there, who said that the director’s car had left and we could all get to the station together.
We arrived at the station at eight o'clock in the morning. That's how I ended up in the bunker.
There were the director, chief engineer, party organizer, deputy chief engineer for science, head of the spectrometry laboratory and his deputy. By this time they managed to take air and water samples and carry out tests. In air samples, up to 17% of activity was found due to neptunium, and neptunium is a transition isotope from uranium-238 to plutonium-239. These are just particles of fuel... Water activity was also extremely high.
The first thing I encountered in the bunker and what seemed very strange to me was that no one told us anything about what happened, about the details of the accident. Yes, there was some kind of explosion. And we had no idea about the people and their actions committed that night. Although work to localize the accident had been going on since the very moment of the explosion. Then, later that morning, I tried to reconstruct the painting myself. I started asking people.
But then, in the bunker, we were not told anything about what was going on in the central hall, in the turbine hall, which of the people were there, how many people were evacuated to the medical unit, what, at least presumably, doses were there...
Everyone present in the bunker was divided into two parts. People who were in a stupor - the director and chief engineer were clearly in shock. And those who tried to somehow influence the situation, actively influence it. Change it for the better. There were fewer of them. Among them I include, first of all, the party organizer of the station, Sergei Konstantinovich Parashin. Of course, Parashin did not try to take charge of technical decisions, but he continued to work with people, he dealt with personnel, solved numerous problems... What happened that night? Here's what I found out.
When the explosion happened, there were several dozen people near the station. These include security guards, builders, and fishermen who fished in the cooling pond and on the supply canal. I talked to those who were in close proximity, asked them - what did they see, what did they hear? The explosion completely demolished the roof and the western wall of the central hall, destroyed the wall in the area of the turbine hall, pierced the roof of the turbine hall with fragments of reinforced concrete structures, and caused a fire in the roof. Everyone knows about the fire on the roof. But very few people know that fires also started inside the turbine room. But there were turbogenerators filled with hydrogen and tens of tons of oil. It was this internal fire that posed the greatest danger.
The first thing the reactor workers did was to close the door to the central hall, or rather, to the open-air space that remained of the hall. They gathered all the people - with the exception of the deceased Khodemchuk - took them out of the danger zone, out of the destruction zone, carried out the wounded Shashenok, and the fifth shift, led by Sasha Akimov, began to do everything to remove explosive hydrogen from the generators and replace it with nitrogen, turn off the burning electrical assemblies and mechanisms in the turbine room, pump oil so that God forbid the fire does not spread here.
After all, the firefighters worked on the roof, and the staff did everything else inside. Their merit is suppression of fires in the turbine hall and prevention of explosions. And it was the ratio of the danger and the volume of work performed in such conditions that resulted in such losses: six people died among firefighters working on the roof, and twenty-three people died among those who worked inside.
Of course, the feat of firefighters has gone down the centuries, and the degree of heroism and risk is not measured by numbers. But nevertheless, what the personnel did in the first minutes after the accident should also be known to people. I am convinced of the highest professional competence of the fifth shift operators. It was Alexander Akimov who was the first to understand what had happened: already at 3:40 a.m. he told the station shift supervisor Vladimir Alekseevich Babichev, who arrived at the station on the call of the director, that a general radiation accident had occurred.
Does this mean that primary care realized what really happened overnight?
Certainly. Moreover, he reported this to management. He assessed the size of the accident and perfectly understood the danger of what had happened. He did not leave the area, doing everything to ensure the cooling of the power unit. And yet he remained human. Here's an example. You know that the control room under normal conditions is staffed by three operators and a shift supervisor. So, the youngest of them, senior turbine control engineer Kirshenbaum, who did not know the layout of the building, was urgently kicked out of the control room by Akimov. They told Kirshenbaum: “You’re superfluous here, you can’t help us, leave.”
All the information that was taken out of the zone by Dyatlov, Sitnikov, Chugunov, Akimov, it all settled in the bunker at the level of the director and chief engineer, was cemented here and was not passed on further. Of course, I cannot say with certainty that she did not reach the upper floors of the leadership of our headquarters. But this information did not reach us. All subsequent knowledge about what happened was obtained independently.
By 10 o'clock in the morning, with the head of our laboratory, I managed to visit control room-3, ABK-2, was in the central hall of the third block and in the area of control room-4, in the area of the seventh and eighth turbogenerators. From the industrial site I inspected the affected unit. One circumstance really alarmed me: the protection control rods entered the zone an average of 3-3.5 meters, that is, half. The core load was approximately fifty critical masses, and half the effectiveness of the protection rods could not serve as a reliable guarantee... I calculated that by approximately 17-19 hours the block could exit from a subcritical state to a state close to critical. A critical condition is when a self-sustaining chain reaction is possible.
Could this mean an atomic explosion?
No. If the zone is open, there will be no explosion because there will be no pressure. I no longer expected an explosion as such. But it was about to start overheating. Therefore, it was necessary to develop technical solutions that could prevent the block from leaving the subcritical state.
Did the station management meet and discuss this problem?
No. This was done by specialists - the head of the nuclear safety department, the head of the nuclear physics laboratory. There was no one from Moscow yet. The most acceptable solution in those conditions was to dampen the apparatus with a solution of boric acid. This could be done like this: pour bags of boric acid into tanks of clean condensate and use pumps to pump water from these tanks into the core. It was possible to stir boric acid in the tank of a fire truck and use a hydraulic cannon to throw the solution into the reactor.
It was necessary to “poison” the reactor with boric acid. At about 10 a.m., the deputy chief engineer for science conveyed this idea to the station’s chief engineer, Fomin. By this time, we had a complete understanding of what urgently needed to be done and what awaited us at the end of the day, and then the demand was born to prepare the evacuation of the city’s residents. Because if a self-sustaining chain reaction begins, then hard radiation may be directed towards the city. After all, there is no biological protection, it was demolished by the explosion. Unfortunately, there was no boric acid at the station, although there are documents according to which a certain supply of boric acid should have been stored..."
Special purpose column
Alexander Yurievich Esaulov, 34 years old, deputy chairman of the city executive committee of Pripyat:
“At night they woke me up on the twenty-sixth, somewhere around four o’clock. Maria Grigorievna, our secretary, called and said: “An accident at the nuclear power plant.” Some friend of hers worked at the station, he came at night, woke her up and told her.
At ten minutes to four I was in the executive committee. The chairman had already been informed, and he went to the nuclear power plant. I immediately called our chief of staff of civil defense and raised his gun. He lived in a dormitory. Arrived immediately. Then the chairman of the city executive committee arrived, Vladimir Pavlovich Voloshko. We all got together and began to figure out what to do.
Of course, we didn't quite know what to do. This, as they say, until the roast rooster bites. In general, I think that our civil defense was not up to par. But the miscalculation here is not only ours. Tell me a city where civil defense is set to the proper level. Before this, we had conducted regular exercises, and even then everything was played in the office. There is also one point that must be taken into account: even theoretically, such an accident was excluded. And this was instilled constantly and regularly...
In the executive committee, I am the chairman of the planning commission, in charge of transport, medicine, communications, roads, employment offices, distribution of building materials, and pensioners. Actually, I am a young deputy chairman of the city executive committee; I was only elected on November 18, 1985. On my birthday. Lived in a two-room apartment. The wife and children were not in Pripyat at the time of the accident - she went to her parents because she was on postpartum leave. My son was born in November 1985. My daughter is six years old.
Here you go. I went to our ATP and decided to organize a city wash. I called the executive committee of Kononykhin and asked to send a washing machine. She has arrived. This is the same song! For the whole city we had - you won’t believe it - four watering and washing machines! For fifty thousand inhabitants! This is despite the fact that the executive committee and the city committee - both of us were very cocky - approached the ministry and asked for cars. Not anticipating an accident, but simply to keep the city clean.
A car arrived with a tank, I don’t know where they dug it up. The driver was not her family and did not know how to turn on the pump. Water flowed from the hose only by gravity. I sent him back, he arrived about twenty minutes later, he had already learned how to turn on this pump. We started cleaning the road near the gas station. Now I understand in hindsight that this was one of the first dust suppression procedures. The water came with a soap solution. Then it turned out that this was a very polluted place.
At ten in the morning there was a meeting in the city committee, very short, about fifteen to twenty minutes. There was no time for talking. After the meeting, I immediately went to the medical unit.
I'm sitting in the medical unit. As I remember now: the block fits in the palm of your hand. Nearby, right in front of us. Three kilometers from us There was smoke coming from the block. It’s not exactly black… it’s just a wisp of smoke. Like from an extinguished fire, only from an extinguished fire it is gray, and this one is so dark. Well, then the graphite caught fire. It was already late afternoon; the glow, of course, was just right. There's so much graphite there... No joke. Can you imagine us? - We sat with the windows open all day.
After lunch, I was invited by the second secretary of the Kyiv regional committee, V. Malomuzh, and instructed me to organize the evacuation of the most seriously ill patients to Kyiv, to the airport, to be sent to Moscow.
From the headquarters of the country's civil defense there was Hero of the Soviet Union, Colonel General Ivanov. He arrived by plane. I gave this plane for transportation.
Forming a column was not easy. It’s not easy to immerse people. It was necessary to prepare documents, medical histories, and test results for everyone. The main delay was in the registration of personal files. Even such moments arose - a seal is needed, and a seal is needed at a nuclear power plant. They hushed up the matter and sent it without a seal.
We were carrying twenty-six people in one bus, a red intercity Ikarus. But I told them to give us two buses. You never know what could happen. God forbid there would be any delay... And two ambulances, because there were two seriously ill patients, stretchers, with thirty percent burns.
I asked not to go through Kyiv. Because these guys on the buses, they were all in their pajamas. The spectacle is, of course, wild. But for some reason we drove through Khreshchatyk, then left along Petrovskaya Alley and drove to Boryspil. We've arrived. The gate is closed. It was at night, at three o'clock, early four. We're humming. Finally, a spectacle worthy of the gods. Someone comes out in slippers, riding breeches, without a belt and opens the gate. We drove straight to the field, to the plane. There the crew was already warming up the engine.
And another episode hit me right in the heart. The pilot came up to me. And he says, “How much did these guys get?” I ask: “What?” - "X-ray." I say: “That’s enough. But in principle, what’s the matter?” And he told me: “I also want to live, I don’t want to get unnecessary x-rays, I have a wife, I have children.”
Can you imagine?
They flew away. He said goodbye and wished him a speedy recovery...
We drove to Pripyat. It was already the second day since I slept, and sleep did not take me. At night, when we were still traveling to Boryspil, I saw columns of buses going to Pripyat. To meet us. The evacuation of the city was already being prepared.
It was the morning of April twenty-seventh, Sunday.
We arrived, I had breakfast and went to see Malomuzh. Reported. He says: “We need to evacuate everyone who is hospitalized.” The first time I took out the heaviest, but now I needed everyone. During this time that I was away, more people arrived. The little man told me to be in Boryspil at twelve o'clock. And the conversation took place around ten in the morning. It was clearly unrealistic. We need to prepare all the people and complete all the documents. Moreover, the first time I carried twenty-six people, but now I need to take out one hundred and six.
We gathered this entire “delegation”, formalized everything and left right at twelve o’clock in the afternoon. There were three buses, the fourth was a reserve one. "Icarus". Here the wives are standing, saying goodbye, crying, the boys are all walking, in pajamas, I beg: “Guys, don’t leave so I don’t look for you.” One bus has been completed, a second, a third, now everyone is getting on, I run to the escort car, now the traffic police have worked clearly, I get on, wait five minutes, ten, fifteen - there is no third bus!
It turns out that three more victims arrived, then more...
Finally let's go. There was a stop in Zalesye. Agreed, if anything
Headlights flash. Let's go through Zalesye - once again! The driver brakes sharply. Buses have become. The last bus from the first ones is eighty or ninety meters away. The last bus stopped. A nurse flies out from there and to the first bus. It turned out that there were medical workers on all the buses, but only the first one carried medicines. He runs up: “The patient is ill!” And that was the only time I saw Belokon. True, I didn’t know his last name then. I was later told that it was Belokon. He was in his pajamas and ran with his bag to help.
V. Belokon:
“The first batch of victims left on the evening of the twenty-sixth, at about eleven o’clock in the evening, straight to Kiev. The operators were taken out, Pravik, Kibenko, Telyatnikov. And we stayed overnight. On the twenty-seventh in the morning, my doctor said: “Don’t worry, you’ll fly to Moscow. We received instructions to take us out by lunchtime." When they took us on buses, I felt fine. They even stopped somewhere outside Chernobyl, someone got sick, I also ran out and tried to help the nurse."
A. Esaulov:
“Belokon ran, they grabbed him by the arms. “Where are you going, you’re sick?” He was amazed... He rushed with the bag. And the most interesting thing is that when they started digging in this bag, they couldn’t find ammonia. I’m here with these traffic cops from the escort I ask: “Do you have ammonia in your first aid kit?” - “Yes.” We turn around, jump towards the bus, Belokon throws an ampoule to that guy under his nose. It became easier.
And I remember one more moment in Zalesye. The patients got off the buses - some had a smoke break, warmed up, puffed and puffed, and suddenly a woman ran with a wild scream and uproar. Her son is traveling on this bus. Is this necessary? This is the connection... Do you understand?.. Where did it come from? - I still don’t understand. He “mommy”, “mommy” to her, calms her down.
A plane was already waiting for us at the Boryspil airport. There was the head of the airport, Polivanov. We drove out to the field to drive up to the plane, right after all the guys were all in pajamas, and it was April, it wasn’t hot. We drove through the gate, onto the field, and behind us a yellow Rafik was blowing, swearing that we had left without permission. At first we approached the wrong plane altogether. "Rafik" took us through.
And another episode. Polivanov and I are sitting comfortably, a bunch of high-frequency phones, filling out documents for the transportation of patients. I gave them a receipt on behalf of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, a letter of guarantee that the station would pay for the flight - it was a TU-154. A pretty woman comes in and offers coffee. And her eyes are like those of Jesus Christ, she apparently already knows what’s going on. He looks at me like I'm from Dante's Inferno. It was already the second day, I hadn’t slept, I was extremely tired... He brings coffee. Such a small cup. I drank this pindurochka in one gulp. He brings the second one. The coffee is wonderful. We settled all the issues, I get up, and she says: “You have fifty-six kopecks.” I look at her - I don’t understand anything. She says: “Sorry, we do these things for money.” I was so detached from money, from all this... It was as if I had come from another world.
We washed the buses again, took a shower and headed to Pripyat. We left Boryspil around 16:00. We already met buses on the way...
Pripyat residents were taken out.
We arrived in Pripyat - an already empty city."
Arthur Shigapov
ISBN 978-5-699-38637-6
Introduction
Write what you see in a book and send it to the churches in Asia...
So, write what you saw, and what is, and what will happen after this.
Apocalypse, 1
Before you is perhaps the most unusual of all guidebooks published in the world. He talks about how to go where you shouldn't go. Where no “sane” person would go voluntarily. There, where a catastrophe on a universal scale occurred, completely throwing away the usual ideas about good and evil. The accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant changed the existing coordinate system and became a kind of Rubicon for the whole country. This is a symbol of a new troubled time, when the usual way of life collapses, and is replaced by cold emptiness and border posts with barbed wire on yesterday's busy roads. The decline of one of the great empires of the 20th century began not in Belovezhskaya Pushcha in 1991, or even in the Baltic states, which declared themselves free three years earlier. It all started here, on a warm April night in 1986, when a radioactive rainbow rose into the sky over Ukraine, and with it over the entire country. Chernobyl is a zone of transition to a new time, where the ruins of the Soviet past are absorbed by a new environment, perceptible only by special devices. This is no longer a future post-nuclear era, but a post-human era.
It is all the more interesting to look beyond the edge of existence and realize the scale of the tragedy that befell this once fertile land and the people who inhabited it.
"Are you crazy? Are you tired of living? If not about yourself, then think about your children!”
How many times have I heard these admonitions from family and friends when preparing for the next “extreme” trip, be it the mountains of Afghanistan, the vast mountains of Iraq, or the ruins of the Lebanese capital immediately after the Israeli bombings. Once upon a time, when the trees were big and the soda from the machine was real, we young boys climbed through dark basements and abandoned dusty attics in search of imaginary dangers. Years have passed, and now matured stalkers - adventure seekers on their own - can be seen in the most uncomfortable corners of the planet, such as the Somali wilderness or a pass in mountainous Chechnya. But every time the danger can be seen or felt, be it the fog on the famous “road of death” in Bolivia, which winds like a serpentine over the abyss, or the bearded Taliban with machine guns at the ready, from which I once had to flee in the Afghan Tora Bora gorge. The Chernobyl enemy is invisible, inaudible, intangible. It is recognized only by the crackling sound of the dosimeter, and this crackling dispassionately notifies that the enemy is already here and has begun his destructive work. You cannot come to an agreement with him, you cannot pity him, he does not accept ransoms and does not warn of an attack. You just need to know what he is, where he is hiding and why he is dangerous. Along with knowledge, fear recedes, the fear of radiation disappears - the so-called radiophobia. There is a desire to refute popular ideas about the Chernobyl zone as a territory of two-headed mutants and birches with fir cones instead of leaves.
This guide will answer many of your questions. It will help you gain an understanding of what happened here 23 years ago and how events developed further. He will talk about dangers, imaginary and real. He will become a guide to the most interesting places associated with the accident, and will tell you how to get around obstacles - real radiation and artificial ones, which were put up by fearful officials.
On one of my visits to the Zone, I rode incognito on a train carrying workers to the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant “Welcome to hell!” read the inscription on the wall of an abandoned house a few kilometers from the final stop. What for some means an extreme foray into the radioactive underworld is for others just a daily commute to work and back. For some, exceeding the daily permissible dose of radiation is a reason for panic, but for others it is a good reason for taking time off. Shift of coordinates or new post-accident reality? Read this book and then try to see it with your own eyes. Happy travels!
Although this guidebook stands out from the harmonious series of ordinary guides to “city-countries”, its structure is simple and understandable. First, the author will introduce you to the history of the Chernobyl accident, not from the moment the fatal atomic chain was launched, but much earlier - when decisions were just being made to build a new energy monster. This narrative is less reminiscent of a dry chronology of events and is rather a story-memory of the past, present and future. Only after realizing the scale and depth of the tragedy can you make a decision about the trip, otherwise it will result in wasted time and money.
Radiation is invisible and intangible; its danger can be assessed only by clearly understanding its structure, dimensions and methods of influence, as well as by owning measuring instruments. To do this, we present to your attention the corresponding section, which tells about the basics of radiation safety in a simple and accessible form. There is also a list of dosimeters that are actually sold. The author has no connection with the manufacturers and considers only popular models, tested by many stalkers, whose advantages and disadvantages have been discussed in detail on specialized sites.
The practical part included the most interesting places, significant from historical and visual points of view. The cost of excursions and trips are real, published on the websites of companies, clarified through negotiations or paid by the author personally. The cost of hotels is given as of the summer of 2009, their description is the author's. In the “Informpracticum” section you will find all the necessary timetables and prices for travel on trains, trains and buses leading to and around the Exclusion Zone. The names of some villages and settlements are given in Russian and local interpretation.
In general, the author conceived this guide as an interesting and useful book for a wide range of readers planning to visit the site of the tragedy or simply interested in Chernobyl issues. The monotonous scientific and academic style is left for other, specialized publications; It also expresses a deeply personal position, gained in the course of travel, studied literature, viewed photo and video materials, meetings with employees of the nuclear power plant and the Exclusion Zone, self-settlers and representatives of government bodies operating in resettled territories.
Story. How it was, how it is and how it will be
In the beginning was the Word...
Chernobyl(lat.- Artemisia Vulgaris, English “ mugwort") is a type of perennial herbaceous plant of the genus Wormwood. The name “Chernobyl” comes from the blackish stem - blade of grass (material from the free Internet encyclopedia "Wikipedia", website)
“The third angel sounded, and a great star fell from heaven, burning like a lamp, and fell on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water. The name of this star is Wormwood, and a third of the waters became wormwood, and many of the people died because they became bitter...
And I saw and heard one Angel flying in the middle of heaven and saying in a loud voice: “Woe, woe, woe to those who live on earth from the rest of the difficult voices of the three Angels who will sound the trumpet!”
Apocalypse, 8
Apocalypse today. What does he look like?
Eyewitnesses of each era give the answer in different ways. The Holy Apostle John, who mystically foresaw the events of the distant future, does not spare color and amazes the reader with the scale of the disasters:
“The fifth angel sounded his trumpet, and I saw a star fall from heaven to earth, and the key to the pit of the abyss was given to it. She opened the pit of the deep, and smoke came out of the pit like smoke from a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened by the smoke from the vault. And out of the smoke came locusts onto the earth, and they were given the power that the scorpions of the earth have. And she was told not to harm the grass of the earth, or any greenery, or any tree, but only to people who do not have the seal of God on their foreheads. And she was given not to kill them, but only to torture them for five months; and her torment is like the torment of a scorpion when it stings a person.”
Two thousand years later, an eyewitness to the man-made apocalypse Yuri Tregub (shift supervisor of the 4th block of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant) will describe what is happening in a language much more ordinary and, in this ordinariness, much more terrible:
“On April 25, 1986, I took over my shift. At first I was not ready for the tests... only after two hours, when I got into the essence of the program. When accepting the shift, they were told that the security systems had been disabled. Well, naturally, I asked Kazachkov: “How did they take you out?” He says: “Based on the program, although I objected.” Who did he talk to, Dyatlov (deputy chief engineer of the station), or what? It was not possible to convince him. Well, the program is a program, it was developed by those responsible for its implementation, after all... Only after I carefully read the program, only then did I have a bunch of questions for it. And in order to talk to management, you need to deeply study the documentation, otherwise you can always be left in the cold. When I had all these questions, it was already 6 pm - and there was no one to contact. I didn't like the program because it was vague. It was obvious that it was made up by an electrician - Metlenko or whoever made it up from Dontekhenergo... Sasha Akimov (the head of the next shift) came at the beginning of eleven, at half past eleven he was already there. I tell Akimov: “I have a lot of questions about this program. In particular, where to take excess power, this should be written in the program.” When the turbine is cut off from the reactor, the excess thermal power must go somewhere. We have a special system that, in addition to the turbine, provides steam intake... And I already realized that this test will not happen on my shift. I had no moral right to interfere in this - after all, Akimov took over the shift. But I told him all my doubts. A whole series of questions about the program. And he stayed to be present at the tests... If only I knew how it would end...
The run-down experiment begins. The turbine is disconnected from the steam and at this time they watch how long its run-out (mechanical rotation) will last. And so the command was given, Akimov gave it. We didn’t know how the coast-down equipment worked, so in the first seconds I perceived... some kind of bad sound appeared. I thought it was the sound of a turbine braking. I remember how I described it in the first days of the accident: as if the Volga, at full speed, began to slow down and skidded. Such a sound: du-doo-doo-doo... Turning into roar. The building began to vibrate. The control room (panel control unit) was shaking. Then a blow sounded. Kirshenbaum shouted: “Water hammer in the deaerators!” This blow was not very good. Compared to what happened next. A strong blow though. The control room shook. I jumped back, and at that time the second blow came. This was a very strong blow. The plaster fell down, the whole building went down... the lights went out, then the emergency power was restored. I jumped away from where I was standing because I didn’t see anything there. I only saw that the main safety valves were open. The opening of one gas processing complex is an emergency situation, and eight gas production complexes was already like that... something supernatural...
Everyone was shocked. Everyone stood with long faces. I was very scared. Complete shock. Such a blow is the most natural earthquake. True, I still thought that there might be something wrong with the turbine. Akimov gives me the command to open the manual valve of the reactor cooling system. I shout to Gazin - he is the only one who is free, everyone on duty is busy: “Let’s run, we’ll help.” We jumped out into the corridor, there is such an extension there.
They ran up the stairs. There was some kind of blue fumes... we simply didn’t pay attention to it, because we understood how serious everything was... I returned and reported that the room was steamed. Then... ah, that's what happened. As soon as I reported this, the SIUB (senior unit control engineer) shouted that the fittings on the process capacitors had failed. Well, again I-I'm free. I had to go to the turbine hall... I open the door - there is rubble here, it looks like I will have to be a climber, large fragments are lying around, there is no roof... The roof of the turbine hall has fallen - something must have fallen on it... I see the sky and stars in these holes, I see that under your feet there are pieces of the roof and black bitumen, so... dusty. I think - wow... where does this blackness come from? Then I understood. It was graphite (the filling of a nuclear reactor. - Author's note). Later, on the third block, I was informed that a dosimetrist came and said that on the fourth block there were 1000 microroentgens per second, and on the third - 250.
I meet Proskuryakov in the corridor. He says: “Do you remember the glow that was on the street?” - “I remember.” - “Why isn’t anything being done? The zone must have melted..." I say: "I think so too. If there is no water in the separator drum, then it’s probably circuit “E” that has become heated, and it gives off such an ominous light.” I approached Dyatlov and pointed out this point to him again. He says: "Let's go." And we continued along the corridor. We went out into the street and walked past the fourth block... to determine. Underfoot there is some kind of black soot, slippery. We walked near the rubble... I pointed to this radiance... pointed at my feet. He told Dyatlov: “This is Hiroshima.” He was silent for a long time... we walked on... Then he said: “Even in my worst nightmare I never dreamed of this.” He apparently was... well, what can I say... An accident of enormous proportions.”
I am Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End
Apocalypse, 1
The city of Chernobyl, which gave the nuclear power plant its name, actually has virtually nothing to do with it.
This town, known since 1127 as Strezhev, received its current name under the son of the Kyiv prince Rurik at the end of the 12th century. It remained as a small county center until recently, passing from hand to hand. In the 19th century, a large Jewish community appeared in the town, and a couple of its representatives (Menachem and Mordechai of Chernobyl) were even canonized by the Jewish church as saints. The last owners of the area - the Polish moneybags Chodkiewicz - were driven out by the Bolsheviks. So the provincial Polesie town would have disappeared into historical obscurity, like thousands of its twins, if the then authorities had not made the decision in 1969 to build the largest nuclear power plant in Europe in its vicinity (at first, a state district power plant was included in the project). It was called Chernobyl, although it is located 18 km from the “progenitor” city. The provincial log village was not suitable for the role of the capital of Ukrainian nuclear scientists, and on February 4, 1970, builders solemnly drove the first peg into the foundation of a new city, named after the local deep river Pripyat. It was supposed to become a “showcase of socialism” and its most advanced industry.
For you say: “I am rich, I have become rich, and I have need of nothing,” but you do not know that you are miserable and pitiful, and poor, and blind, and naked.
Apocalypse, 3
The city was built comprehensively, according to a pre-approved general plan. Moscow architect Nikolai Ostozhenko developed the so-called “triangular type of development” with houses of different heights. Microdistricts, similar to their Togliatti and Volgodonsk twins, surrounded the administrative center with its district executive committee, the Palace of Culture, the Polesie hotel, a children's park and other objects, as they said then, of “social and cultural life”. In terms of their diversity and quantity per capita, Pripyat had no equal in the Soviet Union. In contrast to the cramped streets of old cities, the newbie avenues turned out to be wide and spacious. The system of their location eliminated the occurrence of traffic congestion, which was still unprecedented at that time. Residential buildings formed cozy green courtyards in which children frolicked and adults relaxed. All this made it possible to call Pripyat “the standard of Soviet urban planning,” according to the title of the book by architect V. Dvorzhetsky, published in 1985.
The city was originally planned to accommodate 75-80 thousand people, so the 49 thousand that were actually registered at the time of the accident felt quite spacious. Station workers, of course, received separate apartments first. Bachelor visitors were entitled to hostels (there were 18 of them in total), there were “dormitories” and hotel-type houses for young married couples. There were almost no others in the city - the average age of Pripyat residents did not exceed 26 years. At their service, the builders commissioned a large cinema, kindergartens, 2 stadiums, many gyms and swimming pools. For the May Day holidays of 1986, a Ferris wheel was supposed to be launched in the park. He was never destined to give rides to happy children...
In a word, Pripyat, as conceived by its creators, was to become an exemplary city, where crime, greed, conflicts and other “vices characteristic of the decaying West” are completely absent. One thing the apologists for a bright communist future did not take into account was that old social problems would come to this oasis along with the new residents. And although former Pripyat residents usually characterize their former life as “happy and serene,” it was not much different from the widespread Soviet reality. It is not true that there was almost no crime in the city of nuclear scientists. Children were indeed allowed outside without fear, and apartment doors were often not locked, but theft of personal property was common. Bicycles and boats were especially popular with thieves. In V. Gubarev’s play “Sarcophagus,” a burglar nicknamed Cyclist robbed an apartment on the night of the accident and fled from the scene of the crime on a two-wheeled vehicle. He was later covered by a radioactive cloud. “We doubt it,” local residents grin, “while he was cleaning the apartment, his bicycle would have been stolen.” There were also murders in the city, mainly on domestic grounds, on the day of receiving wages and “washing” them. The most notorious crimes were the hanging of two young people on a horizontal bar in 1974 (the butcher of the Beryozka store was detained in this case) and the death of a young Komsomol girl in hostel No. 10 ten years later. She began to kick out the young guys who came to her and received a fatal blow to the head. The show trial took place in the Palace of Culture, where the killer received capital punishment. Old-timers also remember the armed robberies of the savings bank at the local Yanov railway station and the department store on Druzhby Narodiv Street (1975). The youth were also not distinguished by a meek disposition: mass fights between local boys and visiting “Rexes” happened constantly. This was the name given to builders who, as a rule, came from Ukrainian villages and lived in dormitories. The police did not remain in debt and since 1980 have been intensively chasing down companies of more than three people. Pripyat even had its own exhibitionist, who frightened the girls with his dubious “merits.”
In the evenings, the public walked along the local Broadway - Lenin Street, had gatherings at the Pripyat cafe and had a cultural drink on the river bank near the pier. Young people were eager to attend the legendary disco “Edison-2” by Alexander Demidov, held at the local recreation center “Energetik”. There were often not enough tickets, and then the unfortunate palace was subjected to a real assault by excited dance lovers. This disco survived Pripyat for a whole five years, gathering in the new Slavutich.
Surprisingly for such a regime city, there were also those dissatisfied with the Soviet regime. In 1970, there was a kind of riot that remained without visible consequences. In 1985, a crowd of young people overturned several cars and seriously clashed with law enforcement agencies, which was even reported by “enemy voices.” Homemade printouts of dissidents circulated around the city, and the population listened to the Voice of America and the BBC radio stations with might and main. The fact is all the more surprising when you consider that the largest radio tracking station, Chernobyl-2, which will be discussed below, was located very close by. And yet, in general, local life was much calmer than in any other provincial town. The bulk of the population consisted of highly qualified workers and engineers, whose interests were a prestigious job at a nuclear power plant, where people with a tarnished reputation were not allowed.
In parallel with the construction of city blocks, the construction of four Chernobyl NPP units was carried out. The site for it was chosen for a long time, since 1966, also considering alternative options in the Zhytomyr, Vinnitsa and Kyiv regions. The floodplain of the Pripyat River near the village of Kopachi was considered the most suitable due to the low fertility of the alienated lands, the presence of a railway, river communication and unlimited water resources. In 1970, builders of Yuzhatomenergostroy began digging a foundation pit for the first power unit. It was commissioned on December 14, 1977, the second one a year later. The construction, as usual, faced a shortage of materials and equipment, which became the reason for the appeal of the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Ukraine V. Shcherbitsky to Kosygin. In 1982, a fairly major accident occurred at the station - the rupture of one of the fuel elements (fuel rod), which is why the first power unit was idle for a long time. The scandal was hushed up at the cost of removing chief engineer Akinfeev from his post, but all plans were fulfilled, and at the end of the five-year plan, the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant was nominated for the Order of Lenin. The first call was never heard...
The launches of the 3rd and 4th power units date back to 1981 and 1983. The station was expanding, the project already included the launch of the 5th and 6th units, and this meant permanent well-paid work for thousands of new citizens. A large site has already been cleared for future residential microdistricts in Pripyat.
Antenna ZGRLS "Chernobyl-2"
Few people knew then that very nearby, literally a few kilometers away, there lived another city, the super-secret Chernobyl-2, which served an over-the-horizon radar tracking station (OGRLS). It is located in the forest northwest of the real Chernobyl, 9 km from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, and is not marked on any map. However, its giant steel radar, called "Arc" by the military, is almost 140 m high and is clearly visible from everywhere in the area. Such a colossus served about a thousand people, and an urban-type settlement with a single street named after Kurchatov was built especially for them. Naturally, it was fenced around the perimeter with a “thorn” fence, and warning signs were installed another 5 km before the restricted zone. Sometimes they didn’t help either - the most mushroom places are located here, and KGB officers had to run through the forests after mushroom pickers, selecting crops and removing license plates from cars. Of course, such secrecy gave rise to a lot of rumors and rumors. The most popular one said that psychotronic weapons were being tested here in order to turn hostile Europeans into friendly zombies at the “X-hour” with the help of radio waves. This version was discussed in all seriousness even in the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine in 1993.
In fact, the only purpose of the ZGRLS was to monitor the launches of NATO ballistic missiles, the capture direction was the countries of Northern Europe and the USA. The same stations were built in Nikolaev and Komsomolsk-on-Amur. The “Arc” itself, unique in its size and complexity, was installed in 1976 and tested in 1979. In the Chernigov region there is a powerful source of short waves that passed through the entire territory of the United States, were reflected and caught by the Chernobyl radar. The data was sent to the most powerful computers of that time and processed. The complex also included the SKS - a space communications center. To service it, a whole complex with residential and technical premises was erected. After the Chernobyl accident, it was used to shelter soldiers working as liquidators.
Tracking station, Chernobyl-2
The proximity of Chernobyl-2 to the nuclear power plant is not accidental - the facility consumed a colossal amount of electricity. Despite all its uniqueness, the radar had a lot of shortcomings. It was useless for detecting targeted missile launches and could only “catch” massive attacks typical of a nuclear war. In addition, its powerful emitters jammed the communications of aircraft and ships of European countries, which caused violent protests. The operating frequencies had to be changed, and the equipment had to be modified. New commissioning was planned for 1986...
Was there some kind of predestination for the events that crossed out the smooth flow of peaceful life before the accident? It is known that residents of nearby villages used to say: “The time is coming when it will be green, but not fun.” Eyewitnesses claim that some old women prophesied: “Everything will be, but there will be no one. And in place of the city, feather grass will grow.” One can be lenient about these “old wives’ tales,” but there is a description of the dream of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant master Alexander Krasin. In 1984, he dreamed of an explosion on the 4th block, and dreamed of it in all its details, which took place two years later. He warned all his relatives about the future accident, but did not dare to go to his superiors with this idea. The most famous similar case of a “prophetic dream” occurred a hundred years ago, when Boston Globe reporter Ed Sampson dreamed of a terrible explosion on a distant native island. He wrote down his dream on paper, and by mistake the message was published in all the newspapers. The reporter was fired for deception, and only a week later the battered ships brought news of the catastrophic eruption of the Krakatoa volcano several thousand kilometers from Boston. Even the name of the island coincided...
Be that as it may, the countdown was started, and the “green but gloomy times” were not long in coming.
Judgment Day
What preceded the blow, which Yuri Tregub witnessed? And could it have been avoided? Who is guilty? - these questions were actively discussed both immediately after the accident and two decades later. There are two camps of irreconcilable opponents. The first claim that the main cause of the disaster was design flaws in the reactor itself and an imperfect protection system. The latter blame the operators for everything and point to unprofessionalism and a low radiation safety culture. Both have compelling arguments in the form of expert opinions, conclusions of various examinations and commissions. As a rule, the version of the “human factor” is put forward by designers defending the honor of the uniform. They are opposed by exploiters who are no less interested in saving face. Let's try to set up a third, independent camp between them, and evaluate the causes and consequences from the outside.
The reactor installed at the 4th block of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant was developed in the 60s by the Research Institute of Energy Engineering of the USSR Ministry of Medium Machine Building, and scientific management was carried out by the Institute of Atomic Energy named after. Kurchatova. It was called RBMK-1000 (high-power channel reactor for 1000 electric megawatts). It uses graphite as a moderator and water as a coolant. The fuel is uranium, compressed into tablets and placed in fuel rods made of uranium dioxide and zirconium cladding. The energy of the nuclear reaction heats the water sent through the pipelines, the water boils, the steam is separated and supplied to the turbine. It rotates and generates much-needed electricity for the country. The Chernobyl nuclear power plant became the third station where this type of reactor was installed; before that, the Kursk and Leningrad nuclear power plants were “blessed” with it. It was a time of economy - earlier in the USSR, and throughout the world, they used reactors enclosed in cases made of super-strong alloys. The RBMK did not have such protection, which made it possible to significantly save on construction - alas, at the expense of safety. In addition, the fuel on it could be reloaded without stopping, which also promised considerable benefits. The reactor was based on a military reactor that produced weapons-grade plutonium for defense needs. He had a congenital defect in the form of those very rods that regulate the chain reaction - they are introduced into the active zone too slowly (in 18 seconds instead of the required 3). As a result, the reactor gets too much time to self-accelerate on prompt neutrons, which the rods are designed to absorb. In addition, during the construction of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, in order to save concrete, the height of the sub-reactor room was reduced by 2 meters, as a result of which the length of the rods also decreased - from 7 to 4 meters. But the most important imperfection of the protection was the designers’ complete ignorance of the effect of steam on the reactor’s power. In its transition modes, the working channels were filled with steam instead of “dense” water. Then it was believed that in this case the power should drop, and there were no reliable calculation programs and opportunities for laboratory experiments. Only much later did practice show that steam gives such a jump in reactivity, and in a matter of seconds, that the power increases a hundredfold, and the slow control rods remain halfway at the moment when the atomic genie is already breaking out of the bottle.
Simultaneously with the construction of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, the city department of the KGB was deployed in Pripyat. The 3rd Division of the 2nd Counterintelligence Directorate was in charge of affairs at the facility itself. His competence included collecting data on the construction of the station, its work, employees and the possibilities of sabotage and other activities of enemy intelligence. The first document of the Department, which had excellent analysts, was a certificate dated September 19, 1971, which assessed the technical characteristics of the future Chernobyl nuclear power plant. It noted the lack of experience of the Ministry of Energy of Ukraine in operating such structures, the low level of personnel selection, and shortcomings in construction. Then no one listened to the security officers. In 1976, the Kiev KGB sent a special message to the department’s leadership about “systematic violations of the technology for carrying out construction and installation work at certain construction sites.” It contains damning data: technical documentation from designers was not delivered on time, welded pipes from the Kurakhovsky KMZ are completely unsuitable, but were accepted by the station management, Buchan brick for the construction of premises has a strength 2 times lower than the standard, etc. The concrete for the tank of liquid radioactive waste (!) was laid with irregularities that threatened to leak, and its lining turned out to be deformed. The message ended, as usual, with the imperfection of protection from possible saboteurs, which was entrusted entirely to pensioners - Vokhrovites. But the “voice of the blatant security officer” was drowned in the desert of inaction. The first secretary of the Communist Party of Ukraine and, in fact, the owner of the republic, Vladimir Shcherbitsky, reacted very sluggishly to the warnings of the chairman of the KGB of the Ukrainian SSR Vitaly Fedorchuk, sending another “duty” commission to the station. Well, by God, we can’t stop construction because the welded equipment of our Yugoslav friends from Energoinvest and Djura Djurovic turned out to be defective! But the fact that at high temperatures there is a threat of an accident - this still needs to be proven...
Meanwhile, in 1983-1985, 5 accidents and 63 failures of main equipment occurred at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. And a whole group of KGB workers who warned about possible consequences received penalties for “alarmism and disinformation.” The last report was dated February 26, 1986, exactly 2 months before the accident, about the unacceptably low quality of the ceilings of the 5th power unit.
There were also warnings from scientists. Professor Dubovsky, one of the best specialists in nuclear safety in the USSR, warned back in the 70s about the dangers of operating a reactor of this type, which was confirmed during the accident at the Leningrad Nuclear Power Plant in 1975. At that time, only an accident saved the city from disaster. Employee of the Institute of Atomic Energy V.P. Volkov bombarded management with reports on the unreliability of the protection of the RBMK reactor and proposed measures to improve it. The management was inactive. Then the persistent scientist reached the director of the Institute, Academician Alexandrov. He scheduled an emergency meeting on this issue, which for some reason did not take place. Volkov had nowhere else to turn, since his all-powerful boss then also headed the Academy of Sciences, that is, he was the highest scientific authority. Another great opportunity to overhaul the security system was missed. Later, after the accident, Volkov with his report will make his way to Gorbachev himself and will become an outcast in his Institute...
On March 27, 1986, the newspaper Literaturna Ukraina published an article by Lyubov Kovalevskaya “Not a private matter”, which was noticed by few people. Then she will make a splash in the West and serve as proof that the events that took place were not a coincidence, but for now the young journalist, with the ardor characteristic of those perestroika years, castigated careless suppliers: “326 tons of slotted coating for the spent nuclear fuel storage facility arrived defective from the Volzhsky Metal Structures Plant. About 220 tons of defective columns were sent to the Kashinsky ZMK for installation of the storage facility. But it’s unacceptable to work like that!” Kovalevskaya saw the main cause of the accident in the nepotism and mutual responsibility that flourished at the station, in which the management got away with mistakes and negligence. She, as usual, was accused of incompetence and wanting to make a name for herself. There were only a few weeks left before the adventurous experiment on the fourth block...
And Az saw that the Lamb opened the first of the seven seals, and Az heard one of the four living creatures saying, as if in a voice of thunder: “Come and see.”
Apocalypse, 6
His program, scheduled for April 25, was also designed to save money - it was about using the energy of turbine rotation when the reactor was shut down. The conditions provided for the shutdown of the emergency reactor cooling system (ECCS) and a reduction in power. The creators never fully worked out the issues of reactor behavior and its protection in such modes, leaving the prerogative of decision-making to the plant personnel. The personnel acted as best they could, obeying the test conditions approved at the top, and making fatal mistakes. But can a simple engineer be blamed for consequences not foreseen by physicists and academic designers? Be that as it may, the countdown had already started, and the chronicle of the experiment turned into a chronicle of an unannounced tragedy:
01 hours 06 minutes. Beginning of power unit power reduction.
03 hours 47 minutes. The thermal power of the reactor has been reduced and stabilized at 50% (1600 MW).
14:00. The ECCS (emergency reactor cooling system) is disconnected from the circulation circuit. Postponement of the test program at the request of the Kievenergo dispatcher (the ECCS was not put into operation, the reactor continued to operate at a thermal power of 1600 MW).
15 hours 20 minutes. - 23 hours 10 minutes. Preparation of the power unit for testing has begun. They are led by Deputy Chief Engineer Anatoly Dyatlov, a tough-willed boss and one of the country's leading nuclear specialists. He is aiming for the chair of his boss Nikolai Fomin, a party nominee who is about to be promoted, and a successful experiment can bring him closer to his goal.
Curriculum Vitae
Dyatlov, Anatoly Stepanovich(3.03.1931 - 13.12.1995). A native of the village of Atamanovo, Krasnoyarsk Territory. In 1959 he graduated from MEPhI with honors. He worked in Siberia on the installation of nuclear submarine reactors, where a major accident occurred. He received a radiation dose of 200 rem, and his son died from leukemia. At the Chernobyl nuclear power plant - since 1973. He reached the rank of deputy chief engineer and was considered one of the strongest specialists at the station. Convicted in 1986 under Article 220 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR for a period of 10 years as one of the culprits in the accident at the fourth unit. He received a radiation dose of 550 rem, but survived. Released after 4 years due to health reasons. Died of heart failure caused by radiation sickness. Author of the book “Chernobyl. How it happened,” where he blamed the reactor designers for the accident. Awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor and the Badge of Honor.
00 hours 28 minutes. With a reactor thermal power of about 500 MW, during the transition to an automatic power regulator, a reduction in thermal power not provided for by the program to approximately 30 MW was allowed. A conflict arose between Dyatlov and operator Leonid Toptunov, who believed that the experiment could not be continued at such low power. The opinion of the boss, who decided to go all the way, won. Power rise has begun. The dispute in the control room does not stop. Akimov is trying to persuade Dyatlov to increase power to 700 safe megawatts. This is recorded in the program signed by the chief engineer.
00 hours 39 minutes. - 00 hours 43 minutes. In accordance with the testing regulations, the personnel blocked the emergency protection signal to stop two heat generators.
01 hours 03 minutes. The thermal power of the reactor was raised to 200 MW and stabilized. Dyatlov nevertheless decides to conduct the test at low values. The boiling in the boilers weakened and xenon poisoning of the core began. The staff hastily removed the automatic control rods from it.
01 hours 03 minutes. - 01 hours 07 minutes. In addition to the six operating hydraulic pumps, two reserve main circulation pumps are included in the operation. The water flow increased sharply, steam formation weakened, and the water level in the separator drums dropped to an emergency level.
01 h. 19 min. The personnel blocked the reactor emergency shutdown signal due to insufficient water level, violating the technical operating regulations. Their actions had their own logic: this happened quite often, and never led to negative consequences. Operator Stolyarchuk simply did not pay any attention to the signals. The experiment had to continue. Due to the large influx of water into the core, the formation of steam almost stopped. The power dropped sharply, and the operator, in addition to the automatic control rods, removed manual control rods from the core, preventing the decrease in reactivity. The height of the RBMK is 7 meters, and the removal speed of the rods is 40 cm/sec. The core was left without protection - essentially left to its own devices.
01 hours 22 minutes. The Skala system produced a record of parameters, according to which it was necessary to immediately shut down the reactor - the reactivity increased, and the rods simply did not have time to return to the core to adjust it. Tempers flared up again at the control room console. Leader Akimov did not shut down the reactor, but decided to begin testing. The operators obeyed - no one wanted to argue with their superiors and lose their prestigious job.
01 h. 23 min. Start of testing. The steam supply to turbine No. 8 is shut off and its rundown has begun. Contrary to the regulations, the personnel blocked the reactor emergency shutdown signal when both turbines were turned off. Four hydraulic pumps began to run out. They began to reduce speed, the flow of cooling water decreased sharply, and the temperature at the entrance to the reactor increased. The rods no longer had time to overcome the fatal 7 meters and return to the active zone. Then the count went down to seconds.
01 h. 23 min. 40 sec. The shift supervisor presses the AZ-5 (emergency reactor protection) button to speed up the insertion of the rods. A sharp increase in steam volume and a jump in power are recorded. The rods traveled 2-3 meters and stopped. The reactor began to self-accelerate, its power exceeded 500 megawatts and continued to grow sharply. Two protection systems worked, but they did not change anything.
01 h. 23 min. 44 sec. The chain reaction became uncontrollable. The power of the reactor exceeded the nominal one by 100 times, the pressure in it increased many times and displaced the water. The fuel rods became hot and shattered, covering the graphite filler with uranium. Pipelines collapsed and water poured onto the graphite. Chemical reactions of interaction formed “explosive” gases, and the first explosion was heard. The thousand-ton metal lid of the Elena reactor jumped up, like on a boiling kettle, and turned around its axis, cutting off pipelines and supply channels. Air rushed into the active zone.
01 h. 23 min. 46 sec. The resulting “explosive” mixture of oxygen, carbon monoxide and hydrogen detonated and destroyed the reactor with a second explosion, throwing out fragments of graphite, destroyed fuel rods, particles of nuclear fuel and fragments of equipment. Hot gases rose to a height of several kilometers in the form of a cloud, revealing to the world a new post-nuclear era. For Pripyat, Chernobyl and hundreds of villages around, a new, post-accident countdown has begun.
The accident claimed its victims in the very first seconds. Cameraman Valery Khodemchuk found himself cut off from the exit and remained buried forever in the fourth block. His colleague Vladimir Shashenok was crushed by falling structures. He managed to send a signal to the computer center, but could no longer respond: his spine was crushed, his ribs were broken. Operators carried Vladimir out from under the rubble, and a few hours later he died in the hospital.
Fires started on the roofs of the third block and the turbine hall. The hall of the fourth block was in full flame. To the credit of the people who worked that fateful night, they did not leave the situation to chance and immediately began to fight for the survivability of the station. Computer center engineers saved the Scala system from streams of water pouring from the ninth floor. Shift operators restored the operation of the feed pumps of the third unit. The workers at the nitrogen-oxygen station did not leave their place and supplied liquid nitrogen all night to cool the reactors. Stunned by the explosion, junior inspector of the preventive surveillance service Vladimir Palagel transmitted an alarm signal to the fire department of the nuclear power plant.
Ordinary heroism
Firefighters must show courage, boldness, resourcefulness, perseverance and, despite any difficulties and even the threat to life itself, strive to complete the combat mission at all costs.
From the Fire Service Manual
...That week was not warm like April. The trees were already painted green, the ground had long dried out and was covered with grass. The traditional May holidays were already around the corner, and the residents of Pripyat filled their refrigerators to capacity with food.
Curriculum Vitae
Pravik, Vladimir Pavlovich(06/13/1962 - 05/11/1986) - chief of the guard of the 2nd militarized fire department for the protection of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.
Born on June 13, 1962 in the city of Chernobyl, Kyiv region of the Ukrainian SSR in the family of an employee. Secondary education.
In the internal affairs bodies of the USSR since 1979. In 1982 he graduated from the Cherkassy Fire-Technical School of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs. He loved radio and photography. He was an active worker, chief of staff of the Komsomolsky Searchlight. My wife graduated from a music school and taught music in a kindergarten. A month before the accident, a daughter was born into the family.
While fighting a fire at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, Pravik received a high dose of radiation. With poor health, he was sent to Moscow for treatment. He died in the 6th Clinical Hospital on May 11, 1986. He was buried in Moscow at the Mitinskoye cemetery.
By decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR dated September 25, 1986, he was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union for the courage, heroism and selfless actions shown during the liquidation of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident. Awarded the Order of Lenin. Enlisted forever in the lists of personnel of the militarized fire department of the Internal Affairs Directorate of the Kyiv Regional Executive Committee. The monument to the Hero was erected in the city of Irpen, Kyiv region. The name of the Hero is immortalized on the marble slab of the memorial to the Chernobyl Heroes, erected in the park on Verkhovna Rada Boulevard in Kyiv.
The city was sleeping and seeing its last peaceful dreams when a bell rang at the control panel of the HPV-2 duty officer in charge of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Lieutenant Vladimir Pravik, who headed the guard, immediately realized the seriousness of the situation and radioed the regional fire danger signal (No. 3).
The fact is that it was the second part that was directly responsible for the station, and the sixth served the city. In numerous exercises, soldiers tested the technology of extinguishing the Chernobyl nuclear power plant to the point of automaticity, but this level of complexity was considered only theoretically. The squad of the sixth unit, led by Lieutenant Viktor Kibenok, arrived almost simultaneously with their colleagues, since the distance from Pripyat to the station is much shorter than from Chernobyl.
These two young guys once studied together at the same school, and now they found themselves together in front of the fire-breathing mouth of the underworld and were not afraid of it. They led their comrades behind them - 27 people in total - and not one flinched or even hinted at the mortal danger. Pravik took command as the first officer to arrive at the scene of the fire. At this time, the turbine hall was already in full flame, the roof was burning, and pieces of graphite thrown out of the active zone “glowed” with death itself. According to the Combat Manual, the commander must conduct reconnaissance, identify the source of the fire and how to suppress it. The young lieutenant quickly climbed to the roof and stopped, stunned by the unprecedented sight. Before him, the first person in history, a radioactive volcano opened its torn insides, spewing out the otherworldly light of its hot bowels. It so happened that the first man was not afraid of almost inevitable death, did not move back, but stood with his comrades as a wall in the path of the fire. The roof of the turbine hall of the third block was filled with flammable material bitumen - it was handed over in a hurry for the next congress, fire-resistant coating was not delivered, and the builders used what was at hand, despite all the protests of the firefighters. Now the time has come to take the rap for all the sins of that system, for victorious reports of early delivery, for gross violations of technology and disregard for safety.
Curriculum Vitae
Kibenok, Viktor Nikolaevich- Chief of the guard of the 6th paramilitary fire department for the protection of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, lieutenant of internal service.
Born on February 17, 1963 in the village of Ivanovka, Nizhneserogozsky district, Kherson region, Ukrainian SSR, in the family of an employee. Ukrainian. Secondary education.
In the internal affairs bodies of the USSR since 1980. In 1984 he graduated from the Cherkassy Fire-Technical School of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs.
While fighting a fire at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, he received a high dose of radiation. With poor health, he was sent to Moscow for treatment. He died in the 6th Clinical Hospital on May 11, 1986. He was buried in Moscow at the Mitinskoye cemetery.
By decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR dated September 25, 1986, he was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union for the courage, heroism and selfless actions shown during the liquidation of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident.
Awarded the Order of Lenin and medals.
He is forever included in the list of personnel of the militarized fire department of the Internal Affairs Directorate of the Kyiv Regional Executive Committee. The name is immortalized on the marble slab of the memorial to the Chernobyl Heroes, erected in the park on Verkhovna Rada Boulevard in Kyiv.
Pravik took Tishchura and Titenok, fighters from the sixth part, with him to the roof. The roof was burning in many places, and boots were stuck in hot bitumen. The lieutenant took charge of extinguishing the fire from the fire nozzle, and the soldiers began to throw down the burning graphite.
Who knows whether they imagined the level of radiation emanating from these pieces or not.
Meanwhile, Kibenok went straight to the fourth reactor, where the fire danger was lower, but the radiation exceeded hundreds of roentgens per hour - the level of imminent death. The fire threatened to spread to the third, operating reactor, and then the consequences would become unpredictable. Subordinates took turns standing at the fire carriage, and only the commander did not leave his post for a minute.
Chernobyl-1. Consequences
Sergey, where do the photographs of mutant children that have made the rounds of all the newspapers come from?
Saversky: “130,000 people were resettled from the zone. Many Chernobyl victims still live in certain areas and remain aloof. Many, having never settled down in a new place, started drinking. Vodka today is cheaper than Borjomi... This is a serious social problem. Two years ago, our doctors stated that the mutations occurred from alcoholism, smoking, and not from the effects of radiation. An orphanage near Kiev, where children with various disabilities were photographed, existed before the Chernobyl accident. As for health problems - 3.2 million people so far have since lived in territory contaminated to one degree or another, of which 700,000 are children. Liquidators of the accident have 2.8 times more diseases than the average, and “Chernobyl” parents have sick children 3.6 times more often... And mutations are everything relatively. Let's take, say, trees - there are places in the zone where the needles of the pines were twice as long, there were infected mushrooms, but, in general, not very large...
What can you say about the people who sneak into the zone for picnics? They say that if you don’t pitch a tent at burial grounds, it’s not fatal...
There are no lethal doses of radiation left in the zone, or the places are protected. But nevertheless, it can end badly. You inhale, say, a radioactive particle. It will get into your lungs. 5 centimeters of lung tissue will die, it will drop lower, and so on. A cancerous tumor will appear, intestinal cancer, but you never know... Here, when we are sitting in a room in Chernobyl, this is nothing. And on the street - it’s just like the wind blows.
Why wasn’t the territory of the exclusion zone completely cleared? What was that $130 billion spent on from '86 to 2000, besides benefits for victims?
Cesium stains are scattered over tens of kilometers. Are you proposing to uproot this entire forest? For everyone, Chernobyl seemed to be over, as if it no longer existed. Every time, with a change of ministers, the policy changes... And contaminated materials continue to be stolen. In Polesie, I talked to the local population, I said: “Why are you ruining your health by getting into the zone?” And they: “Before, there were collective farms here, there was work. But now there is no work. I’ll sell this metal, and the children will have bread...” Maybe if we turn the zone into a nature reserve with appropriate protection, people won’t come here...
By the way, why don’t you like “Stalker” so much?
I love the Strugatskys very much, but “Stalker” is, excuse me, the fantasy of an unbalanced person....
Andrey Serdyuk, former Minister of Health, now director of the Institute of Hygiene and Medical Ecology of the Academy of Medical Sciences of Ukraine, after the accident spoke about the need to evacuate Kyiv. “Today it is difficult to say what they did right then and what they did not. It was the most serious radioactive disaster in the history of mankind, and God forbid that it was the last. Even in Hiroshima, more people died from the explosion itself, from the temperature, from the blast wave , and not from radiation, and Chernobyl means hundreds of Hiroshimas. Kiev was lucky - in the first days the wind from the station blew towards Belarus.
And yet...
In May 1986, every day I laid out these reports on the table of the Minister of Health. Here you go: on May 1, 100 people were already hospitalized with radiation sickness; on May 2, the radioactive background in Kyiv was 1,100 microroentgens per hour, a hundred times higher than normal. And during the May Day demonstration on Khreshchatyk, the dosimeter showed 3000 microroentgens per hour. Water, milk - in everything the background radiation was higher than normal. At the same time, we had to collect this information bit by bit, because Moscow, having closed the zone, insisted that everything was in order. Norwegians, Swedes, Finns passed on information about the radioactive background, but we knew practically nothing. Today it is difficult to say what was right and what was wrong then. Dosimeters were of little use - the weather changed, and measurements could become irrelevant within a few minutes. We took blood from those evacuated from the zone and checked people for radiation sickness. The symptoms of radiation victims did not coincide with those described in textbooks, dosimeters went off scale, so today no one can say with accuracy what doses of radiation we received then.
It seems like I’m a doctor, but we were such fools then. After the accident, when we went to the zone to check the situation, we went out on the road to have a snack, laid out sandwiches on the hood of the car... Everything around was contaminated, there was an iron taste in our mouths, but the sun was shining, the weather was wonderful, Moscow just reported, that in a few months the fourth power unit will be restored and the construction of new power units will be completed at the station. People were resettled just a few kilometers from the station. Only later, when they realized how seriously the territory was contaminated, did they begin to evict them further...
In those days, a plan for the evacuation of Kyiv was discussed. We tried to somehow assess what was happening, to give a forecast of the further spread of radiation, so that Moscow could decide how necessary it was to evacuate the city of three million. Basically, of course, the commission members tried to soften the forecasts. Academician Ilyin, a leading scientist in the field of radioactive safety, told me then: “What I saw in Chernobyl cannot be imagined in my worst dreams.” And on May 7, when this decision was supposed to be made at 11 at night, after endless rewrites of the draft, the recommendation was printed: “The radioactive background in Kiev is dangerous,” and handwritten below it was written: “Not very...” The prospect of evacuating a huge the city seemed no less terrible then... Perhaps the Americans would have decided to evacuate the population in a catastrophe of such magnitude. In our country they preferred to simply increase the radioactive standard.
And yet, on May 15, over 650,000 children were taken out of Kyiv, first for 45 days, then for two months. This saved them from the doses of radiation that adults received. But even after four and a half months, the radioactive background in Kyiv was 4-5 times higher than normal.
What is the tragedy of Chernobyl? The fact is that young people were sent there, some of whom died, some became disabled. The only thing that Ukraine was lucky about then was that the accident occurred during the Soviet Union, because no country could have dealt with such a disaster on its own. Today there are about 900 thousand liquidators scattered throughout the CIS. If Ukraine had to fight this on its own, we would simply bury the entire young generation.
The liquidators who repatriated to Israel should demand compensation not from Israel, but from Russia, because it was responsible for this experiment. Today, when the USSR no longer exists, we in Ukraine are not in a better position than your liquidators...
It is believed that hundreds of thousands of people suffered not from radiation, but from stress.
Mental health is an equally important factor. Millions have been living in a stressful state for 17 years, in constant fear for the health of their children - and most of the “Chernobyl victims” really suffer from vegetative-vascular diseases and nervous system disorders.
Professor Ivan Los, head of the radioecology laboratory of the Scientific Center for Radiation Medicine:
“According to the IAEA, if there is no radiation contamination, there are no problems... But this is not so - people live in constant depression, apathy, with a feeling of doom. And we don’t know how to deal with this. What can you say to a young girl who is afraid to give birth to children and says: “I don’t know how long I have left to live”? Add to this political instability, a difficult economic situation - all this together affects the physical and moral condition of people. Today, when it comes to rehabilitation contaminated lands, we also need to think about how to build factories there so that people do not also suffer from unemployment. If you remove some stress factors, the risk that the effects of radiation will appear becomes less. We did not know then that stress We need to pay no less attention than to the radiation itself. It is a normal human reaction to be afraid of radiation and its consequences. And when such a catastrophe occurs, it turns out that we have created dangerous technologies while being completely incapable of dealing with their possible consequences. It's a vicious circle. Without nuclear energy, we cannot improve our standard of living; let’s say, today Ukraine receives 50% of its energy from 4 operating nuclear power plants. But nuclear technology is not for the poor, because recycling waste requires tens of billions of dollars.
How do you assess the situation today?
Today the population is divided into two parts: those who don’t want to hear about it anymore, they want to earn money and live. This category does not bother me, as a specialist, because they look to the future. The other half says: “You have always lied to us, I don’t believe you,” so even if you bring them 10 professors, they will still prefer to cheat each other with rumors... Sometimes when we meet people who are afraid to eat vegetables from our garden - we have to eat strawberries and drink milk in front of them - so that they believe that it is not dangerous. It is necessary to change the methodology of explanatory work with the population, but this requires costs, and there is no money.
Why was it forbidden for the population to sell Geiger counters after the accident?
Los: “People bought the devices themselves, on the black market. The batteries soon ran out, or they broke, and people did not know what to do with them. In order for this to be effective, the meter must be of high quality, measurements must be taken by specialists.”
Are there ways and, most importantly, a reason to fight radiophobia?
Logic doesn't always help. Once the chairman of a collective farm came to me and said: “My wife wants to move away from Chernobyl, but I have a job, a house... What should I do?” I honestly told him that where he was going to go, the natural radioactive background was higher, but if it made his wife feel better, let him go. And he eventually moved. Today, even the very word “Chernobyl” evokes irritation and fear. Not nuclear power plants in general, but specifically the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.
The station was closed, but in reality it will continue to be closed for a long time.
Naturally, people received the main dose in the first days after the accident, but its consequences will also reach our children. Moscow needed this experiment, and we all became its hostages. Today, for every resident of Ukraine there is 1.5 cubic meters of radioactive waste, in addition to the natural radioactive background. In addition to Chernobyl, there are enough problems - radiation comes from uranium mines, plus metallurgical waste, coal mines, operating nuclear power plants... In three years, Russia will begin to return processed nuclear fuel to us. The half-life of plutonium is tens of thousands of years; who in hundreds of years will remember where they buried what? The dose will decrease over time, but it will not go away. The Swedes bury this as deeply as possible, Russia is far away, and here it is right next door.
It is believed that 3.5 million people in Ukraine received an additional dose of radiation, including 1.3 million children. 17 years later - how did the accident really affect people's health?
Everyone is afraid of mutants, but it’s too early to talk about this - several generations must pass for this. And calves with two heads are born anywhere in the world. After the accident, 14 more deaths are added annually to the standard mortality rates from cancer in Kyiv alone. It seems that for 3 million people the numbers are not so terrible - but these 14 unnecessary tragedies might not have happened... This is a grandiose and terrible experiment on people, which, over time, begins to be treated with unforgivable frivolity, as something that "has already passed". But the radionuclides will not go anywhere for tens of thousands of years, and emissions of radioactive substances continue from the cracks in the sarcophagus.
2,216 settlements suffered from the consequences of the accident, and despite the fact that Kyiv is not one of them, 69,984 children in Kyiv suffer from an enlarged thyroid gland. In the first days there was a lot of radioactive iodine in the air, which is one hundred percent absorbed by the blood and reaches the thyroid gland. Children's thyroid gland is 10 times smaller, but they received the same dose. In addition, their main diet is dairy products... Grass was radioactive then, and a cow eats 50 kilograms of grass a day... Children will live longer than us, so their chances of getting cancer are higher than those of a person who exposed to radiation as an adult. Before 1986, cases of thyroid cancer in children could be counted on one hand, but now there are 2,371 such cases, including 36 children who were born after the accident.
There is a center for radiation medicine, in the middle of Kyiv there is a sign indicating the radioactive background... What, in fact, is not being done today?
Serdyuk: “Observation of this today is less intense than it should be.
Those who were children at the time of the accident are now starting their own families, they are having children... The problem is that since the state is poor, it cannot always provide normal prevention of these diseases, even then. When we know what needs to be done.
By the way. What is your opinion about “radioactive tourism”?
Los: When I was in Sweden, at one of the nuclear power plants I saw a schoolchildren’s excursion near the pools where fuel assemblies are cooled. They observed the Cherenkov glow there, measured the level of radiation, calculated something... It amazed me. I think that if such things are done, it is not for the sake of money, but for explanatory purposes. After all, in the end, some areas in the Chernobyl zone are cleaner than Kyiv...
Chernobyl-2. Marauders
A 30-kilometer exclusion zone (100 kilometers from Kyiv, in a straight line) is a rather arbitrary concept.
“And what,” I naively ask at the Dityatki checkpoint, “on this side of the fence does the radiation end?”
Naturally, they answer with a serious look. - Barbed wire perfectly holds back radioactive particles...
However, Chernobyl is spread across the earth not so much by the elements as by the bipeds themselves.
The state’s logic is simple: risking the lives of several thousand zone workers is considered justified, since the damage from the possible spread of radionuclides is disproportionately higher. And it’s not so difficult to convince the zone workers themselves to stay working in this damned place - the risk of getting cancer is somewhat ephemeral, but the salary increases are quite tangible. Judge for yourself: an increase of 300 hryvnia, when in Ukraine a police officer receives up to 400 hryvnia. The length of service is one in five, you’re at work for 15 days, at home for 15, and not even the 86th is already in the yard, it doesn’t seem that dangerous... While in other areas the police do not have enough for a full complement of personnel 10 people or more, each company guarding the exclusion zone is missing a maximum of 4 people.
However, not only honest hard workers have long been making money in the zone. In addition to the workers of 19 enterprises operating in the zone and 3,000 official “tourists” who visit the nuclear power plant itself every year, looters are caught red-handed in the zone every month.
The perimeter of the zone is 377 kilometers (73 in Ukraine, 204 in Belarus), the main roads are blocked by checkpoints, and the zone itself is patrolled by five companies of police officers. But with an area of 1672 kilometers, a dilapidated fence, in some places completely missing (about 8 kilometers), all precautions are not able to stop the looters who intend to steal something from the abandoned apartments of Pripyat or the settling tanks of radioactive equipment, so Chernobyl itself little by little spreading around the world - if not in the form of radioactive particles flying in the wind, then at least in the form of contaminated metal removed from the zone, New Year trees, fish caught in Pripyat, etc. Since the beginning of the year, 38 citizens who illegally entered the zone have already been detained.
“The roads are blocked, but people come with a horse and cart, or load contaminated metal onto a sled,” explains Yuriy Tarasenko, head of the department of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant zone of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine in Kiev. “And those who take it without checking it at points those who accept metal are irresponsible people, but the main thing for them is to have more weight, more money..."
Neither patrols nor statistics on the rise in cancer cases deter adrenaline-fuelled picnic enthusiasts in the 30-kilometer zone. Some are attracted by the legends about Chernobyl catfish the size of a small whale and piglets with hooves like baby’s hands, while others go “to the point”, try to remove a couple of doors from cars in a radioactive equipment sump. From a distance, "Rossokha" is no different from an ordinary cemetery for old cars.
Come a couple of tens of meters - and goosebumps will begin to trample your back, like racehorses. On a huge field surrounded by barbed wire, thousands of cars stand in neat rows. A number of fire engines, a number of armored personnel carriers, bulldozers, buses, minibuses, private cars, helicopters, a small plane - over 2000 pieces of equipment that took part in eliminating the consequences of the Chernobyl accident.
Those machines that after work “failed” almost like the fourth unit were buried in a burial ground on Buryakovka. But they are slowly trying to “sell” the metal from the open septic tank - cut it up, take it away for decontamination, and sell it. The scandals raised by the discovery of “dirty” metal outside the zone forced the administration to ban private enterprises from dealing with scrap metal, and shift responsibility to the state-owned enterprise Kompleks. However, judging by the number of missing doors on cars on Rossokha, poverty or greed overcomes fear. “Metal thieves” who crashed in other regions of Ukraine while trying to cut wires from electrical poles have reached Chernobyl.
Even from one of the helicopters from which firefighters extinguished the burning reactor in the first days, and which no one in their right mind would approach, someone managed to cut off the blades.
10-15% of stolen property taken out of the zone by roundabout routes is radioactive. Since this phenomenon has long become widespread, Pripyat district prosecutor Sergei Dobchek has plenty of work to do. He himself, by the way, leads an extremely healthy lifestyle: in the morning, at any temperature, he runs to swim in the Pripyat River. “Radiation in small doses is even useful,” he argues cheerfully. “It’s like being doused with cold water - the same shock for the body. If I work here, I breathe this air for four years, and in the summer, say, it’s hot - so why not swim in Pripyat?" Then, becoming a little more serious, he adds: “It’s clear that this doesn’t make things better, but if you’re always afraid of radiation, it’s impossible to work. Anyway, the reactions inside the sarcophagus continue, and these emissions settle here in the form of radioactive dust...”
Since the abandoned property in the zone does not seem to belong to anyone, looters who bring “peaceful atoms to every home” from the zone can only be judged for removing contaminated equipment from the zone, which is considered an environmental crime.
What about the burial grounds, which, they say, no one remembers where they are buried?
The burial grounds were built immediately after the accident, without experience in this area, without suitable equipment. ... There are large burial grounds with clay fortification, but there are also about 800 piles where soil and wood were buried on the spot, and they simply put a sign: “radioactive.” Today, experts monitor the movement of radioactive particles to prevent them from entering the river. There is also a problem with plugging artesian wells. There are 359 of them in the zone, and so far only 168 have been plugged, and from there radionuclides can get into groundwater..."
And besides environmental crimes?...
There is now a big case regarding the unauthorized use of funds at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. And so, domestic crimes... Last year there were two murders in the zone: one of the self-settlers shot another with a gun. And another time, the body of a homeless person was discovered in a cemetery - some gang tried to steal metal, they couldn’t share something, and one was strangled...
Why are they still in the zone?
According to our laws, you can only take them out of here and give them a fine... But they still have nothing to pay the fine with, and if you take them out of here, they will still come back...
I begin to torment Tarasenko again: “They say that criminals are hiding in Pripyat. Don’t your five companies catch them there?”
“It’s not that difficult to get into the zone, and it’s even easier to hide in it,” he says. “72 settlements were evacuated, and there are now thousands of empty houses in the zone.
There were local residents who received a criminal record before or after the accident, served time, returned - and the city was empty... Well, they went to some village - there were mushrooms, fish ... "
Why don’t you carry a Geiger counter with you?
“Yes, I’m afraid of radiation,” he smiles. “Everyone wears storage devices (shows a badge, inside of which there are pills, which are checked at the end of the month, and if the dose received during this time exceeds the norm, he is evacuated from the zone). Our guys also eat fish, which is caught here... If there are no bones, then nothing.
They check. Naturally, for the presence of radioactivity. Different types of fish perceive radiation differently. Let’s say, if you caught a fish worth 70 becquerels, you ate it, it’s considered clean. But 150 is impossible.
And in ordinary fish, not from Pripyat, how many of these same becquerels?
Don't know...
There are forests around the Chernobyl watch village, emboldened wolves howl at night, but for a closed zone the Chernobyl 30-kilometer road is quite alive - today about 11,000 people work there, during the day people in khaki jackets walk the streets, and at night in the center of Chernobyl the windows of residential buildings are on fire houses, and in liquor stores men cheerfully pester saleswomen... But this is in the center.
“When I went home for the first time, my subordinates told me: “You be careful - there are wild boars running around there,” recalls Tarasenko. “I thought they were joking, then I looked - and there really are wild boars running around the streets, they have already dug up the entire vegetable garden... After a normal city, the feeling is, of course, eerie. At night, when I go to my apartment, in this dead silence, it’s somehow incomprehensible why there is no light in the windows, no people on these streets. How can this be, you think, I work here, I’m on my way home... Where did everyone else go?”
Chernobyl-3. Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant
Inside the 30-kilometer zone there is a 10-kilometer area of the greatest contamination, in the center of which is the Lenin Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. At the checkpoint at the entrance to the 10-kilometer zone there are two frozen police officers, next to it there is a pile of boards, make a fire... During the day it still looks all right. And at night there is an empty foggy road, and you feel how every cell contracts so as not to let invisible poison into itself. Judging by the sign on the road, we are passing the village of Kopachi. After a kilometer and a half - the second shield, crossed out with a red line - is the outskirts of the village of Kopachi.
Several fruit trees stick out in the middle of the wasteland. The village itself does not exist - it was demolished and buried right there, under the “green lawn” - so that a fire in the empty houses would not spread the radioactive dust that had settled on them.
Smoke is briskly coming out of the boiler room chimney at the station, and the lights are on in the windows. Normal working station. Only the cranes near the unfinished 5th and 6th blocks, out of the planned 12, stick out as eerie skeletons in the black sky - for 17 years now. The fourth unit of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, where the accident occurred, was launched in 1984, and only managed to work for 2 years.
Plant workers consider this a political decision, at least because the Chernobyl nuclear power plant is the only station in Ukraine that could produce plutonium for the production of an atomic bomb. Nuclear energy is 500 times more profitable than any other, so the plant workers are accustomed to living “like humans.” After the closure of the power unit, the station turned from a donor into a consumer of energy, and constantly finds itself in debt.
“After the accident, the fourth unit failed,” explains Irina Kovbich. “In 1991, there was a fire at the second unit, and it was also closed. In 1996, despite the fact that its service life was 30 years, under pressure from countries.” G7" the first block was closed. We were left with one working third block, which was our salvation. And in 2000 they closed that too, because the West wanted to enter the 21st century "without the Chernobyl danger." And we were left dependent state budget, that is, virtually without a livelihood and with an outstretched hand. Even one working unit made it possible to provide for Slavutich, pay for the work of specialists. We received salaries on time, maintained kindergartens, gyms... And last year in Slavutich in the summer for the first time There was no hot water for several months."
In the morning, residents of Slavutich - thousands of station workers, dressed in identical green and blue jackets, go to work. After the accident, when it still seemed that the consequences of the accident could be eliminated in a few months, a city of nuclear workers was built for the plant workers by all the union republics, and the city’s districts were named after their capitals. They also rebuilt the Yantarik-2 kindergarten there. To spur the development of the city, Slavutich was declared an offshore zone. The city itself is clean, but the forest around is contaminated with radiation. Now, after the dismissal of half of the station’s workers, Slavutich is beginning to gradually wither away.
But virtually all of Ukraine lives like this.
Yes, but we are not used to it. If we have always lived well, why lower our standard of living? And the West told us: “It was your president who signed the decree to close the station.” We just do it first and think later.
Are you saying that people should have continued to work in the contaminated area?
All the same, this station will not be closed in our lifetime. A nuclear power plant is not a textile factory that you closed, put a lock on the door, and left. It is necessary to remove all radioactive substances, turn off all systems... The second block is already empty, there is still radioactive fuel left in the first and third.
And how long does it take to extract it?
First you need to build two plants - for processing liquid and solid radioactive waste. We need to build a storage facility for them. Construction of ISF-2 may be completed by 2006 - it is expensive, and maximum safety of the building must be ensured. At the station itself, various systems are gradually being disabled, and people continue to be fired all the time. But the closure work will continue for 100 years... Work will continue here all the time until it turns into a safe facility. ISF-1 is designed for 40 years. Then we will have to build a new storage facility. First, the station was closed, and only now a plan is being drawn up on what to do next.
The absurdity is that due to the closure of all power units, the station will become a less safe place because there will not be enough money. We believe that closing the third side was a wrong decision, because it was equipped with the most modern security systems, and we could easily continue to earn money to close the station until 2007 - without loss. But they needed to bring Ukraine to its knees, and instead of producing electricity, the station now only consumes it. When our electricity debt reached 2.4 million hryvnia, they threatened to turn it off. The station owed 5.5 million hryvnia for the train that transports workers from Slavutich to the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, and the number of cars was reduced from 12 to 10."
Sorry for being intrusive, but why don’t you have protective suits at the station?
Decontamination is constantly carried out at the station, and yet, even in not the “heaviest” areas, the radioactive background here is 8 times higher than in Kyiv.
For workers at nuclear facilities, the norm is different, 2 centisieverts per year. Today is not 86, if a subordinate received an increased dose, the authorities bear criminal liability for this. We have special food... Is that how they treat themselves in Chernobyl with alcohol? Here you can’t come to work under stress, there’s a different discipline here. And anyway, what is radiation? So you, flying to Ukraine, received a radiation dose that is our three-day norm at the station. There is radiation in brick houses, but nothing. Radiation affects everyone differently. Small doses can be dangerous for some, but I've been working here for 15 years and nothing. 4 years ago, a French channel came here to film us, so at the Dityatki checkpoint they dressed in protective suits with gloves, like aliens, and they had a camera in a special case... So they drove around the entire zone. For people here it was such a circus... Once a delegation came from Gomel, and one girl looked at me with square eyes. She finally said: “I had no idea that you were here... looking like that.” I asked her: “Did you think we were all here with three hands?”
However, you will agree that the place to work is not the most pleasant.
I came to the station from Moscow after the accident, following my husband, and I don’t regret it at all. We immediately got an apartment and a good salary, while many of my classmates never found a job in Moscow. And I hope to work here until retirement. The average salary here is 1,500 hryvnia.
“I know people from Pripyat who stayed there for 24 hours and gave birth to a bunch of children,” adds Semyon Stein, head of the station’s information department. “I’m a Jew, I live in Slavutich, I’ve been working here for 15 years, and I feel great. Here There are no hysterics there. Everyone has long experienced radiophobia. There are specialists who work here who know what we are talking about. The main thing is not to go where you don’t need to. Yes, in general, where you don’t need to go, they won’t let you in. Near the sarcophagus there are places where the radiation from the cracks is higher - 4.5 roentgens.
The sarcophagus itself, I must say, looks more than unpleasant.
The giant concrete structure, erected over the exploded reactor, is covered with rusted sheets, and in some places you can detect cracks in it with the naked eye.
The fourth block building is surrounded by a double fence with barbed wire, cameras, and armed guards. The sarcophagus itself, which has been called “the most dangerous building in the world,” has been in operation for 16 years. Part of its structure was built directly on the ruins of the fourth block. The sarcophagus itself is not airtight, and rainwater flows inside through openings between the iron sheets, into cracks, entering the destroyed reactor and causing new chemical reactions. These cracks in the sarcophagus are about 100 square meters. In addition to the 200 tons of radioactive fuel remaining in the reactor itself, about 4 tons of radioactive dust have accumulated inside the sarcophagus, which continues to slowly seep out through the cracks. They nail it down with “showers” from special solutions, but nevertheless, small leaks continue. In relatively safe places of the sarcophagus, teams of 12 people take turns, performing dust compaction work, monitoring the indicators of sensors installed inside the sarcophagus - however, not where they should have been, but where they were able to be installed...
“The building of the sarcophagus is designed for 30 years of operation, but the problem is that we have no control over the chemical processes occurring inside,” explains Valentina Odenitsa, deputy head of the Chernobyl NPP information department. “The sarcophagus needs to be strengthened at 15 different points, but so far we have succeeded done only in two places. In some places, the radiation is so high that even in protective suits you can’t get there for a short time - 3500 roentgens per hour.
Previously, the fuel-containing masses were a monolith, like lava, but over time, under the influence of chemical processes, they turn into dust. Some of the structures are supported by the block building itself, and they are deteriorating. Even a magnitude 3 earthquake could be enough to cause a building to collapse and send up a cloud of radioactive dust."
They say that even if this happens, due to the fact that there is no fire, such a cloud will not leave the zone.
"It is difficult to predict anything here because we do not know what is happening inside the reactor. If less than 10% of the fuel that was thrown out of the reactor during the explosion, rising into the air, managed to pollute thousands of square kilometers - it is difficult to say what will happen to the remaining 90%..."
Instead of trying to patch up the old sarcophagus, the Shelter-2 project was recently approved - a giant arch made of steel or titanium, which will be erected over the sarcophagus. The arch will cost about $768 million and will be sponsored by 28 countries, including Israel. English, French, American and Ukrainian engineers are currently working on the project, and its construction should be completed by 2007. The new shelter will be designed for 100 years, and its goal is to prevent radioactive particles from leaving the shelter, until their final removal from the ruins of the fourth block and complete decontamination of the territory.
Why, in fact, have not started building it yet?
Well... First, a tender takes place, and preparatory work is carried out in parallel. Even such basic things as decontamination booths for 1,500 people, not 40..."
The station's PR is up to the mark - in a special hall they will show you a film about the explosion of the reactor (the cameraman who filmed the smoking reactor from a helicopter has long been dead), and they will show you a model of the sarcophagus and the unfinished station. And if your rank deserves it, they will even take you in a special suit on an excursion to the relatively safe places of the sarcophagus, so that you can receive your dose of 40 millisieverts there. By the way, about 3,000 people visit the station every year - politicians, students, foreign specialists.
Is this radioactive tourism?
"We don't call it that. There are simply citizens of different countries who have the right to know what's going on here."
At this stage, opinions about the Chernobyl nuclear power plant are divided into directly opposite ones: some believe that the plant no longer poses any danger, most of the victims actually suffered from radiophobia, and not from radiation, and by fanning panic, the Ukrainian government is simply begging for money from the West. Others believe that, on the contrary, people treat the Chernobyl nuclear power plant with blatant negligence, while the real consequences of long-term exposure to radiation in small doses will begin to appear much later - the peak of cancer diseases will occur in the 20s of this century, and the absence of a third head will still does not mean the absence of mutations at the cellular level. Today, about 12% of the state budget of Ukraine is spent on eliminating the consequences of the Chernobyl accident (including benefits to liquidators, various studies, and care for displaced people).
Chernobyl-4. Pripyat
Along the sides of the road leading to Pripyat, shields with a radiation “propeller” flash here and there.
Buried behind the rusted railway rails is the “red forest” - those four square kilometers of pine trees, the needles of which, after the accident on the fourth block, changed color from green to red in a matter of hours under the influence of radiation. Even today, the background there is such that rare cars of zone workers drive along this road at high speed and with their windows tightly closed. On the other side of the road, young pines have already grown, over which the ugly “sarcophagus” building rises at a distance of a couple of kilometers.
Some buildings still display cheerful slogans of the Communist Party, but the eerie, unbelievable silence that reigns in this dead city makes the heart ache sadly. The abandoned city, which was once a thriving abode of nuclear scientists, looks worse than the collapsed villages. There, rotten wooden houses somehow fit into the general background of post-Soviet devastation in the villages, and look much more “natural” than the concrete high-rise buildings of the “Ferris wheel” with cheerful yellow booths rising above the dead city. Before the construction of the nuclear power plant and Pripyat, this area was poor, with sparse villages. The reactor breathed life into him, and he took it away.
Huge, slightly shabby inscriptions on the buildings still invite visitors to the cafe, furniture store, Polesie hotel, palace of culture - visitors who have not come for 17 years. The glass windows of the apartments are still tightly closed by the owners, who were afraid of the contaminated wind. Neat courtyards with children's slides and swings are drowned in groves of young trees, and red rose hips glow on the poisonous snow. Sometimes former residents of Pripyat find it difficult to find their home, winding in the car along roads, some of which are already blocked with windfall, and reflexively honking at the empty space.
The smell of mold emanates from the open entrances. The entrance to the first entrance of house number 11 on Kurchatova Street is blocked by a tree that grew directly from the drain grate.
Bending around its tough branches, I go inside. The plaster is crumbling from the walls, water is flowing from some pipe that was broken in an unknown year.
Some apartments are tightly locked, the doors of others are wide open - first they were visited by the owners, then by looters, who, due to poverty, were not stopped even by the fear of radiation. Standard layout, standard furniture, shoes, clothes, books scattered on the floor... In one of the apartments there is a broken piano...
Some of the apartments were preserved as if people had disappeared from there at the behest of some evil magic shelf. And now tree branches are tapping on the windows more and more boldly, threatening to break the glass and break into the houses.
The gates of the Yantarik kindergarten are hospitably open. Small wooden tables and chairs are scattered throughout the room, wooden cubes are collecting dust in drawers, there are wooden pyramids on the shelves...
Under Krupskaya’s quote: “We must raise healthy and strong children,” an orphaned and faded doll and a teddy bear are sitting in an embrace on children’s lockers. Nearby are small gas masks, covered with a thick layer of dust.
Before the accident, Pripyat was mainly inhabited by station workers and their families. A few days after the accident, when the background radiation on the city streets reached one and a half roentgens per hour, 1000 times more than the norm, 47 thousand residents were evacuated from the city. Except for one, who, according to legend, guarded the Jupiter plant, got drunk on alcohol, and slept through the evacuation...
Sometimes criminals find refuge in abandoned apartments. Maybe that’s why police officers at the entrance to the city wear bulletproof vests instead of protective suits...
Walking along the boulevards of this city of ghosts, bad thoughts involuntarily creep into your head that this is exactly how the last person on earth will feel, walking through an empty city, passing frozen construction cranes, shabby slogans on the walls, empty telephone booths and blue spruce trees sticking out on the boulevards among the wild young growth, like a crystal palace in the slums. In about 10 years, the houses will be completely swallowed up by vegetation, the world will change, and this city will remain a terrible, crumbling monument to something unknown, with meaningless signs to dead streets.
A dog is trotting towards me along an empty street. “Damn,” I think, and speed up, remembering one of the Chernobyl stories about how a wolf devoured a dog on a leash.
After the first dog, another similar animal of indeterminate color emerged from one of the courtyards and slowly trotted after the first. However. They behaved quite friendly. As it turned out, the dog Mukha lives with his mother Murka at the checkpoint near Pripyat, and in the booth behind the barbed wire 9 small puppies are swarming around, which the station workers are happy to take apart...
Are they... Normal? - I ask cautiously, suggesting that in such a place nine small puppies could very well turn out to be... well, let's say, one large puppy that has not grown together...
“Quite,” the guards nod.
“Will the city really remain empty?” I ask Sergei Saversky. “It’s somehow creepy...”
And you calculate how much it will cost to raze it to the ground. In 87-88, the city was decontaminated, and it wasn’t just radiation that was a problem.
At the same time, 45 thousand people were taken out in 3 hours. People, leaving for what they thought were a couple of days, left their refrigerators full, locked their dogs and cats in their apartments... And when the apartments were opened a few months later, you can imagine what was there. Later, after being tested for radiation, people were allowed to take something out of less “dirty” areas... The first area suffered the most - its windows overlook the station... In 1986, they decided to keep the city “warm” for the winter, continued to heat houses. Then the heating was turned off, the pipes burst, the water supply is now leaking in all the houses... As a result, something will have to be done with the city. But you can't live here.
So why do people work here?
Specialists are subject to a different radiation standard. Getting into the zone is not so difficult - as soon as the fence was restored, 5 new holes immediately appeared. Everyone just knows what they are risking.
Chernobyl-5. Chernobyl settlers
In addition to the zone workers, another 410 people live behind the barbed wire - those who did not settle down where they were evicted after the Chernobyl accident and returned to their homes. Of the 72 evacuated villages, 12 came to life again, although if there is life after death, apparently, in this world it looks like this. Most of the self-settlers are old people who never received the promised apartments in normal areas. It is possible that it is easier for someone to wait until the problem goes away on its own, and judging by the frequency of funerals of old people in the zone, this is not such a crazy hypothesis. There are no children there. The only girl born in Chernobyl, after many scandals and threats from social services to take away the child, was taken out of the zone. The girl, by the way, was born quite healthy.
In one of the crumbling villages, Anna and Mikhail Evchenko live in a blackened wooden house for 65 years. In the courtyard of the house we are met by a huge black Vaska with a claim to a Persian cat, unexpected for these places. In a shed, covered with an old blanket, Evchenko keeps a cow with two calves, a “chilling pig” and geese. After the accident, they said, they were moved to a “cardboard house” with a leaking roof 60 kilometers from Kyiv.
“On April 26, when the accident happened, we were at home,” says Anna Ivanovna. “On May 3, they came to evict us, they told us to take only the most necessary things. But people had farms, livestock. They weren’t allowed to take animals, even cats. All the village was crackling, people were walking down the street, howling... Someone was being dragged by force, it was worse than the war... I don’t want to remember it. And in the house where we were moved, we somehow overwintered, went to work in the sugar mill plant... But the winter turned out to be painfully harsh..."
Despite their complaints, no better place was found for them, and together with 170 families, they returned to their village in 1987, deciding to wait until they could find better housing for them. Over time, someone got an apartment in the city, someone died, someone was taken away by their children, someone went to a nursing home. Evchenko and 25 other old people remained in the village.
The zone was already closed then, so how were you allowed to enter?
Closed? Yes, the police helped us unload our things in the yard. I started working as a cleaner in Chernobyl. At the checkpoint at the dosimeter it was ringing like a hare...
“I worked as a bulldozer operator in Chernobyl then,” adds grandfather Mikhail. “After the accident, all sorts of deputies came constantly. And now no one cares about us anymore. Everything is falling apart... Our generation somehow inherited both the war and Chernobyl... Ours "Life is already over, and I feel sorry for the children who fell under this. We were waiting for an apartment, but apparently we won’t get it..."
It’s somehow awkward to start a conversation about their household in a place where even such innocent fairy tales as “Grandfather planted a turnip, and a big, big turnip grew...” don’t sound very cozy.
You drink the milk of a cow that eats radioactive grass, take water from a well, eat vegetables from the garden... Are the consequences felt?
“Yes, everyone who lives here constantly has a headache, high blood pressure,” says Anna. “Either from radiation, or from old age. They come here sometimes, take measurements.. Once even the Japanese or Chinese came and measured the soil ... They said the radiation is within normal limits. But we don’t even take off our clothes at home because of this radiation. There’s no life here. However, when we call an ambulance by phone, it comes.... Now we’ve been sitting without bread for two weeks. Sometimes people come to us by car and sell them at exorbitant prices, for one and a half rubles... The cat over there has lost weight.”
Their children live in Belarus and rarely come. “Now a border has been drawn between us, who knew that this would happen. The eldest son once wanted to take me home, and they didn’t let him go into the zone, they said: “We’ll shoot out the wheels.” So I walked for 8 kilometers...
If everything is so bad, did you try to leave here after 1987?
“Where should we go? They didn’t give us anything, so we were left with that. Someone might have taken a normal apartment for themselves. Five families moved to Berezan, but we stayed. They bring gas in cylinders, there is electricity, a TV, they bring newspapers ... Children occasionally come to visit. When my grandson was little, he came here to stay in the summer, but now he doesn’t come anymore..."
Chernobyl-6
First, the bison Stepan, one of the 13 individuals remaining in Ukraine, was brought into the Zone. His wife was unlucky; as a result of an unsuccessful mating, the bison Stepan was left in splendid isolation. For some time he walked through the forests and grazed the cows brought to the zone for him. Then I died. But 24 Przhevalsky horses, brought into the zone together with Stepan, multiplied and now a whole herd of 41 horses grazes there. (Damn, the photo of Przewalski's horses has disappeared somewhere... If I find it, I'll post it.. :-))
In general, since the Chernobyl accident, when it became clear that the zone would remain contaminated for at least several centuries, dozens of different projects have been put forward on the topic of its future over the past 17 years. Starting from the idea of bringing criminals there, and ending with a scientific project of raising animals in the zone in order to observe the long-term effects of radiation on various types of living organisms. Among the implemented projects is the breeding of pigs, since it has been proven that if they eat clean feed, their meat is not radioactive.
There was also a plan to turn the Chernobyl zone into a storage facility for spent nuclear fuel, where radioactive waste would be transported from all four operating nuclear power plants in Ukraine, and even for money - from all over Russia. But Sergei Saversky is more impressed by the plan to transform the exclusion zone into a unique, largest nature reserve in Ukraine.
“I’m tired of dealing with nuclear waste for 17 years,” he says. “I would like something to grow here. There was a project to plant the entire area with forests, since trees prevent the wind from carrying radionuclides. It’s also possible to raise wild boars here, since in other places in Ukraine there are normal the forests have already been destroyed. From a geographical point of view, this is a unique reserve. At the mouth of the Pripyat there are places for spawning...
Sergey Yuryevich, doesn’t this idea seem a little cynical to you - first destroy the territory and then give it to animals, because humans can no longer live there?
The idea is cynical, but constructive - this is the only place that man will not take away from animals. Most nuclear power plants were built in beautiful places, near rivers, so that there would be water to cool the reactor.
And yet - a nature reserve with radioactive spots?
There are also less contaminated places in the zone, say, on the periphery of the 30-kilometer zone. Perhaps, thanks to enhanced protection of the zone, it will be possible to protect rare species of animals from poachers.
In 1986, there was a plan to turn the territory bordering the village into a “green lawn” - simply bury the contaminated soil in the same place where it lay. The large-scale implementation of this idea was abandoned due to the risk that groundwater would erode the piles and spread the radiation further. There are many projects, but no one wants to invest in tomorrow.
Sergei Saversky, who today holds the position of deputy head of the administration of the exclusion zone and unconditional resettlement zone, came to the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in 1986. At the time when he received a telegram with the order to “go to decontamination work of the 3rd and 4th units of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant,” Saversky was just preparing to defend his doctoral dissertation at the Ural Polytechnic Institute. Having arrived at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant for a few days, he remained in the zone for 17 years.
“We needed to complete the construction of the “sarcophagus” as quickly as possible. In the first years, we did nothing but work, it was a real war. The family refused to come here, and now my daughter has already graduated from university. Many people’s families fell apart then. But I couldn’t quit my job in the middle, although I had such an opportunity. Back then there wasn’t all this four-story pile of papers (points to a table littered with papers).
Of the 15 people who worked with me on the roof, only 5 survived. And I, although I had to work in fields at 1000 rem, am still alive. In general, each organism perceives radiation differently, some argue that radiation in small doses is more dangerous. Many of those who worked on the construction of the sarcophagus are disabled today. Although even then there was already a category of people who went to the zone to receive bonuses. And some of those who really suffered say that going for these benefits is beneath them, although they feel bad."
Do you regret staying here?
Sometimes I regret it. But you can't run away from fate. Most people are here temporarily. Like any normal person, they earn their living here and want to get out of here as quickly as possible. And there is another category - those who lived here before the accident, specialists from the station, for whom the zone is their life. Here, 95% of the time is still taken up by work.
Not everyone outside the zone thinks about what you are doing here. Do you feel like you were simply forgotten here?
No, because no one is forcing us to be here. It is obvious that outside the zone our work is not appreciated. And you can find a job with a salary of 450 hryvnia - about 100 dollars. But someone needs to do this work, and I’m afraid even our grandchildren will not have the chance to see this zone open. What are people doing here? They are working to ensure that radiation does not spread further. At Mayak, where the spent fuel storage facility exploded in 1957 and the cooling system did not work, work continues to this day. Plutonium decay continues for tens of thousands of years. So talk about people being able to return to live here is unrealistic.
And yet - 11,000 people in a closed zone?
There are constant layoffs at the station, but about 4,000 people are still working there, doing maintenance on existing facilities, and preparing the station for closure. The reactors have been shut down and decommissioning is now underway. At the first stage, radioactive fuel will be removed and transported to a spent nuclear fuel storage facility, which is still under construction. Construct plants for processing liquid and solid spent fuel.
They are preparing to build a second shelter over the sarcophagus. The money has not yet been transferred, there are only guarantees from 29 countries...
They say that in 1986 the contaminated land and forest were buried in a hurry, and today they no longer really remember where these burial grounds are.
There are about 800 piles in the zone, where radioactive soil, forest, demolished houses are buried... In 1986, contaminated houses and forest were destroyed with military equipment, trenches were dug up to two meters deep, and they were buried there. Near the Pripyat River there was no point in burying sand in sand, so radioactive sand was simply sprinkled with soil on top and secured with latex. 10% of these burial grounds will have to be reburied - there is such a project as "Vector", - and we are talking about 500 thousand cubic meters of contaminated materials.
The problem is that in the absence of a budget, you have to make a list of priorities and do not everything, but only the most urgent things. There is still radiation on the old road along which you were driving - on the trees, grass... But now the most dangerous place in the zone is the oil plant, because the piles there are located next to the Yanovsky backwater. They are fenced off from it by a dam, but still, if particles get into the water... Over the years, we have already reburied several piles. If there was money, everything else would also be urgent. But if there is no money, then the matter is not working... "Red Forest" is buried in 25 trenches, and I would suggest drilling a couple of wells with sensors in each of them and carrying out local monitoring. But to approve each such idea, expert opinions are needed, and sometimes more money is spent on this than on the implementation of the project itself. There is also a fire station here... In 1992 there were several fires in 5 different parts of the zone... So you can’t leave this place to the mercy of fate.
What part does Belarus take in this?
We have a joint commission where flood problems are discussed. Basically, radioactive particles move through water. And 30% are created on the territory of Belarus, in the Polesie radioecological reserve. They do not have burial grounds for burying radioactive substances. They are mainly involved in monitoring and protecting the zone.
Recently, self-settlers were registered in Ivankovo, since it is prohibited to live in the zone itself, even though they live here. That is, the administration has actually come to terms with their existence?
We are talking mainly about old people who lived by the river... They lived in these caravans, where they were moved, and returned here... They tried to evict them many times, even through the prosecutor's office - but they returned. Now we carry their products, send an ambulance if anything... There is nothing more cynical than calling the Chernobyl accident a grandiose social, chemical experiment... When people with children come here on the anniversary of the accident, to show them where they lived... Every year we accept for funerals the bodies of people who lived here and want to be buried here...
You are specialists, and you are fully aware of what radiation is. Nevertheless, you calmly walk around the zone without special suits...
Why did you want us to still wear gas masks here? People work here, not walk. There are places - there are not many of them - where they work in protective suits, for a limited amount of time - up to 4 hours, then undergo sanitary treatment... If their storage devices show that they have received radiation above the norm, they are evacuated from the zone. You get used to it, you know where you can go and where you can’t. In 1986, when I went out onto the roof of the sarcophagus and physically felt the radiation, the smell of ozone, and such a strange wind, there were all sorts of existential thoughts, but now it’s already routine.
Continued from the end. Chernobyl-7
The third toast, which is usually drunk to the ladies present here, is drunk in the zone to the firefighters who tried to put out the burning reactor and died from radiation sickness. Their bodies were taken to Moscow for burial.
"Yes, I don't drink..."
"Come on, drink... It helps against radiation. Why are you laughing? Those who drank alcohol in the first days survived..."
Unlike the “elite” - the workers of the nuclear plant itself, other workers in the zone often escape from radiation the old fashioned way - with alcohol. The drug is controversial because in order for it to be effective, you need to consume alcohol in such quantities that chronic alcoholism is guaranteed. Perhaps in my entire life I have never consumed alcohol in such quantities as during these three days of the “Chernobyl resort”. The only problem is that when you go outside, and it seems that your throat is again scratchy from radiation, the hops disappear instantly.
On the third day in Chernobyl, I gave up. This place makes you so depressed that you completely lose the desire to wonder why your head is cracking so much - is it from radiation, from winding through crumbling villages and contaminated forests, from conversations with the inhabitants of the zone who consider themselves lucky to work there , and are ready to risk their health for the sake of a salary increase, from an attack of radiophobia, or simply from fatigue.
“I’ve had enough,” I thought, and bravely dug my teeth into the cutlet, sincerely hoping that it was not made from Chernobyl cows. Next, the fried fish was tasted - again, based on the fact that this was not the same fish that the fishermen had caught in Pripyat earlier. Well, in the evening, naturally, in the Chernobyl hotel, where there were three of us on two floors, I climbed into the shower under streams of water with an unknown chemical composition. After all, how long can a person live in such tension in this damned place, where wolves eat leashed dogs in the city at night, and wild boars dig up the garden behind the local police station with their snouts?
On the way back to the Dityatki checkpoint, a police officer walks around our car with a dosimeter. A couple of times the dosimeter starts screaming so loudly that my feet immediately stick to the ground out of fear.
“Don’t worry,” he reassures. “This is how he collects the sample, and when he is silent, he measures... You see, there are no deviations from the norm.” Climbing onto a human-sized metal dosimeter and placing my hands on the lattice panels on the side, I watch with relief as the sign “clear” lights up on the display.
So what does it mean? Why haven't I been irradiated?
No, this means that there are no radioactive particles on you now. I hope,” he suddenly smiles, “you are not disappointed.” And that is, people here - as soon as the dosimeter rings, they leave it like heroes...
At the entrance to Ivankovo there is a giant egg lying at the intersection. Local residents do not know who demolished it. They say this egg is a symbol of the future. Maybe something else will be born here...
Chernobyl stories. I'm starting from the end... Maybe it will be more fun this way.
Part eight, dedicated to hgr
At one time, in the area of the current exclusion zone there were 18 churches (and 6 synagogues, for those interested). One of the Chernobyl legends says that at the beginning of the last century, a holy fool ran through the villages, pointed at churches, and said: “This one will be destroyed, and this one will burn... But this one will stand.” Most of the churches were indeed destroyed in the 30s of the last century, two more burned down after the Chernobyl accident. There is only one church left - the St. Elijah Church in the Chernobyl guard village. On Sundays, self-settlers from surrounding villages are brought to it for services, and parishioners slowly, on their own, try to restore it in all its 18th-century glory.
70-year-old Joseph Frantsevich Brakh spent a month trimming the golden dome, scale by scale, with his own hands. When meeting, he unexpectedly starts talking about Israel: “We are all worried about Israel here. Maybe now that Arafat has appointed this new prime minister, it will be easier for you. Know that we support you in Chernobyl.”
“You know, people call us such an insulting word - “self-settlers,” as if we came here to do something that belongs to someone else,” says Nadezhda Udavenko (50), a parishioner of the Chernobyl church who lives next door with her parents, with resentment. “But in reality this is after all, our homes. We are true patriots of this land, and by living here, we have done much more for it than all the liquidators combined. We believe that this land will still bloom, and its revival will begin with this church.
They are trying to survive us from here by all means. A couple of years ago, they drove by in cars and set villages on fire... Some people’s houses burned down, they went to live in other houses, but didn’t leave... We live here, grow vegetables in the garden, eat them - and nothing. One woman here, almost 40 years old, gave birth to a healthy girl here. Some people live by science, while others live by faith."
How did you get back here?
From the window of the house I saw a fire at the station. Helped evacuate people from Pripyat. And she herself stayed here. I was a teacher, trying to instill in children a love for their land. If we don't stay here, who will? This land can only be revived with love. In 1986 we were in such shock, we didn’t know what to do, where to go. And I, like many then, came to this church without understanding even the basic words of prayer. But how I let go... And I stayed here.
Priest Nikolai Yakushin, himself a former Chernobyl survivor, comes from Kyiv with his mother for several days a week for services. “There is radiation, of course, but there are also miracles,” he says. “For example, in the church itself the level of radiation is lower than in my Kyiv apartment. And on the altar there is zero radiation. And all the icons were preserved, although there were attempts to break into the church. ..
Still, God protects his holy place. And last year, Vladyka allowed us to bring here the relics of Agapit of Pechersk, who heals hopeless patients. The Chernobyl land is also affected by a hopeless disease. But we believe in miracles."
Father Nikolai has another dream - to found a historical museum in Chernobyl.
“You can’t imagine what amazing places there are here,” he says with enthusiasm, unfolding the maps. “An old-believer monastery, ancient ruins, burial mounds...” Listening to him, pictures of the revival of Chernobyl are drawn, and his enthusiasm is so infectious that you want to grab a shovel and run to the excavations. For a couple of minutes you forget that the chance of digging up a radioactive waste repository in the zone is much higher than some mound...
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