In another section of Moscow, a suburb in the time of Kurchatov but now absorbed into the city, the huge bronze head of the father of the Soviet atom bomb remained on its plinth outside the institute that he had founded. Behind it the thick steel gates, built to resist the forced entry of even the most determined saboteur, creaked as they opened on their rusty hinges.
Inside, the house formerly occupied by Kurchatov was now a museum, carefully preserving both the home and the archives of this Soviet hero. Visitors and interested scholars were told about the great man in hallowed tones. A television crew from Leningrad came to make a programme about him, but to the consternation of the institute’s scientists, a commentary was added with a sneering tone. ‘Yes,’ said the reporter as the camera scanned the elegant living room with its comfortable sofas and chairs, ‘they really had a hard life, those pioneers of the Soviet state.’
It was the same when journalists interviewed the honorary director of the Kurchatov, Academician Anatoli Alexandrov. He had retired now from running the institute, and his place had been taken by Academician Velikhov, Gorbachev’s scientific adviser and Legasov’s great rival, who was now vice president of the Academy of Sciences and had a fine office at the Neskuchny Palace. Alexandrov, however, retained all his titular honours, and on the rare occasions when he was driven in his huge Zil limousine to the institute he still sat in his huge office under a large portrait of Lenin to receive his guests.
‘Anatoli Petrovich,’ asked a reporter from Ogonyok magazine, ‘a lot has been written about the Chernobyl disaster, but it would be nice to hear your opinion.’
‘You asked the question in a very delicate way,’ Alexandrov replied, ‘but in fact you are probably keen to find out whether I consider myself responsible for the accident. Don’t feel awkward, I don’t need it … I tell you, Chernobyl became the tragedy of my life as well. I do feel it, every second. When it all happened, and I found out what they had done there, I nearly died. I was in a very poor state. Because of it, I decided to resign as president of the Academy of Sciences. I told Gorbachev about it. My colleagues tried to stop me, but I thought I had to do it …’
‘Anatoli Petrovich, are there faults in the design of the Cherenobyl-type reactor?’
‘Yes, there are faults, but the cause of the accident was the defective experiment and gross violations of the regulations governing the operation of a nuclear power station … The design cannot be blamed. Is the engine or the designer of a car to be blamed for an accident? Surely anyone can understand that it is the fault of the bad driver.’
Whenever they could, the younger scientists at the Kurchatov tried to protect their chief from having to answer questions of this kind. Had not Professor Dubowski from Obninsk exonerated Alexandrov and stated that Dollezhal’s bureau was to blame? Remembering the birthday party they had given for him in 1983 in the auditorium of the House of Culture, it took little imagination to realize how much the old man had suffered in the past eight years. His much-loved wife had died, his chosen successor, Legasov, had hanged himself, and there had been Chernobyl. Behind his haughty eagle eyes, and beneath that bald dome, there was surely a sorrow that no scientific formula could cure. Had not the finest minds of the greatest nation fought tirelessly to show the world that fascism and imperialism were not the only way? How many had died for socialism in Alexandrov’s lifetime? Fifty million? Seventy million? How many more might have died if they had not armed themselves with an atom bomb? And what boundless opportunities this new source of power had presented. Had he not dreamed of nuclear heating for Arctic cities, nuclear ships, and nuclear trains? Had not his reactors embodied the promise of Soviet socialism?
Then came Chernobyl and the subsequent meltdown of the Soviet Union. The first and only state built on the principles of science, with fuel rods assembled into a critical mass and control rods to prevent a runaway reaction. They had achieved the critical mass, and if people had behaved as predictably as atoms, it would have worked. But who could have foretold that all the control rods would be removed – and by the operators themselves? It was this that had led to the catastrophe: the human factor. But how could a physicist be expected to enter something so unpredictable into the equation? How hard it was that he had survived to see it all explode. In a generation in which so many lives had been too short, Alexandrov, like Dollezhal and Slavsky, was a man who had lived too long.
Epilogue
In January 1993, the International Atomic Energy Agency published a new report by its Nuclear Safety Advisory Group on the accident at Chernobyl, INSAG-7, which revised the analysis made in the first report in 1986, INSAG-1. The international experts now admitted the injustice of some of the charges made against the operators in INSAG-1, for example that running the reactor at low power was forbidden by the regulations. This had been based ‘on oral statements made by Soviet experts during the week following the Vienna meeting. In fact, sustained operation of the reactor at the power level below 700MW(th) was not proscribed, either in design, in regulatory limitations or in operating instructions. The emphasis placed on this statement in INSAG-1 was not warranted.’
INSAG-7 also revealed the findings of the Soviet Commission headed by Nikolai Steinberg, published in Moscow in 1991, that the dangers inherent in the design of the control rods of the RBMK reactors had been noticed at the Ignalina nuclear power station in Lithuania in 1983. ‘Although the Chief Design Engineer for RBMK reactors promulgated this information to other RBMK plants, and stated that design changes would be made to correct the problem, he made no such changes, and the procedural measures he recommended for inclusion in plant operating instructions were not adopted’.
However, the authors of INSAG-7 did not entirely exonerate Dyatlov, Akimov and Toptunov. ‘INSAG remains of the view that in many respects the actions of the operators were unsatisfactory.’ The human factor was still considered a major element in causing the accident. The poor quality of operating procedures and instructions, and their conflicting character, may have put a heavy burden on the operating crew; and the type and amount of instrumentation as well as the control-room layout made it difficult to detect unsafe reactor conditions. ‘However, operating rules were violated, and control and safety rods were placed in a configuration that would have compromised the emergency protection of the reactor even had the rod design not been faulty … Most reprehensibly, unapproved changes in the test procedure were deliberately made on the spot, although the plant was known to be in a condition very different from that intended for the test.’
INSAG-7 listed without comment the technical measures that had been taken in the former Soviet Union to improve the safety of the RBMK reactors, but conceded that the precise cause of the accident ‘may never be known’. Indeed, the technical factors were less important than the political and psychological factors that had contributed to the accident, summarized as the absence of a ‘safety culture in nuclear matters, at national level as well as locally’. It was left open to question whether or not this had been established in the now independent nations of Russia, Lithuania and Ukraine.
The consequences of the accident remained as uncertain as the cause. In 1992, Western scientists confirmed reports from Belorussia of an increase in child thyroid cancer in the Gomel region. This had been expected, but not so soon. The overall incidence had risen from four cases a year between 1986 and 1989 to fifty-five in 1991 and sixty expected in 1992. In six cases, the cancer had spread, mostly to the lungs. One child had died and ten others were seriously ill.
Also predicted, but difficult to quantify, was the number of deaths from cancer which could eventually be ascribed to the collective dose of radiation received as a result of the accident at Chernobyl. Robert Tilles, the director of Chernobyl Help in Moscow, thought it would ultimately claim more victims than World War II. The British National Radiological Protection Board estimated around thirty thousand fatal cancers over the next forty years in the affected parts of Russia and Western Europe, a 0.1% addition t
o those anticipated in the same population over the same period of time.
Abel Gonzalez, the Deputy Director of the Division of Nuclear Safety at the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, in a symposium on nuclear accidents held in Helsinki in the summer of 1992, accepted this ‘theoretical presumption … of several thousands of additional cancers’, but felt it would never be susceptible to epidemiological detection, because of the high background rate for cancer. In May 1992, a research project funded by the American Cancer Society, the British Imperial Cancer Research Fund and the World Health Organization estimated that 250 million people alive today in the developed world would die prematurely from diseases caused by smoking.
Image Gallery
Dr. Angelina Guskova.
Dr. Alexander Baranov.
Efim Slavsky in retirement.
Professor Yuri Israel.
Dr. Antoli Romanenko.
Irina Avramenko, resident of the thirty-kilometer zone.
The fence around the thirty-kilometer zone.
Anatoli Dyatlov after his release from prison.
Victor Brukhanov after his release from prison, with his wife, Valentina.
Vladimir Gubarev.
Professor Andrei Vorobyov.
INDEX
Abagyan, Dr Armen, 125, 135–37; conclusions on causes of accident, 315, 434; inquiry into accident, 254; measures to prevent future accidents, 434–35; report to conference in Vienna, 260, 271, 274–75
Academy of Sciences: Alexandrov, awards and achievements, 24, 29–30; Legasov made full member, 24; writers in, 68–69
accidents: at Armyansk (1982), 63; at Balakovsky (1985), 63; at Beloyarsk, 54; at Kursk, power cut (1980), 64; at Mayak, 13–14; at Obninsk, 21; at Three Mile Island, 25, 61, 145, 235; concealment of, 53; explosion in core of first reactor (1982), 56–57; meltdown in Leningrad, 53–54; probability of, in RBMK reactors, 56; see also Chernobyl nuclear power station explosion
Adamovich, Ales, 343, 376; campaign against nuclear power, 388–89; discussion of cover-up, 381
‘Against Anti-Historicism’, 330
Agroprom, 360
air pollution, 420
Akhromeev, Marshal Sergei, 124, 447
Akimov, Alexander, 51–52, 56, 77, 82, 90; during accident, 83, 90–92, 103–4; dies on 10 May, 207–8; discusses accident in hospital, 115, 206; sent to hospital in Moscow, 189
Akimov, Luba, 51, 146, 206–8
Akinfiev, Vyachslav, 43, 57–58
alcoholism, 229, 401
Alexandrov, Anatoli: awards and achievements, 16–17, 29–30; blame for accident, 255, 339; development of pressurized water reactor, 12; feelings about Chernobyl, 454–55; investigates levels of contamination, 325; meets with senior scientists (2 May), 235; mourns loss of Legasov, 347; president of Academy of Sciences, 21–22; realizes enormity of the accident, 129; safety of nuclear reactors, 27, 56, 334; succeeds Kurchatov, 16; views Chernobyl, 65
Aliev, Geydar, 230
All-Union Industrial Department for Nuclear Power Plant Operation, see VNIIAES
All-Union Industrial Department for Nuclear Energy, 125
All-Union Research, Design and Development, Institute of Power Engineering, 277
All-Union Research and Development Institute for New Power Enterprises, 285
All-Union Research Institute for Nuclear Power Plant Operation (VNIIAES), 125, 135
All-Union Scientific Centre of Radiation Medicine, 315, 351
Alpha Group, 447
alpha particles, xxvii
alpha radiation: rad for, xxviii
Altunin, Gen., 123
Amur River, 44
Andreyeva, Nina, 346
Andropov, Yuri, 29, 67
Anspaugh, L. R., 415
anti-semitism, 79, 329, 346; denied by Gorbachev, 218
antiseptic regime, 203–4
Antoshkin, Maj. Gen., 140–43, 162, 163
aparatchiks, 40–41, 331
Argumenti i Fakty, 386
arrest and trial of the guilty, 299–311; defence pleas, 305–9; evidence cleared by KGB, 300–11; reading of the charges, 303; sentences of defendants, 311; testimony of witnesses, 307; verdict, 311
Asmolov, Vladimir, 374
Association for the Promotion of Perestroika in the Ukraine (RUKH), 369
Atomenergo, 17, 28
Atomic Energy Transport Association, 162
Avramenko, Ivan and Irina, 297, 404–5
Babichev, Vladimir: gives testimony at trial, 310; replaces Akimov, 103–4
Babi Yar, 365
Bagdasarov, 104, 105
Balakovsky nuclear power station, 52
banks close in Kiev, 246
Baranov, Dr Alexander, 189, 190, 200; at meeting in Kiev (1988), 316
barium, 190
Baryakhtar, V. G., 416
‘Beard, The’, see Kurchatov, Igor
becquerel (Bq), xxviii
Belaya Tserkov fire brigade, 178–79
Belayev, Dr, 419
Belorussia: evacuation of, 386; independence, 450; levels of radiation in, 384; outrage over Chernobyl, 389; uninhabitable parts of, xxi
Belorussian Ministry of Health, 171
Beloyarsk reactor, 19, 54, 74–75
Ben, Anatoli, 111–12, 121, 291
Ben, Tatiana, 111, 291
Berdov, Gen., 135–36; evacuation of Pripyat, 145–48; health of, five years after accident, 441
Berdov, Gennadi, 110
Beria, Lavrenty, 4–5, 11, 391
beta particles, xxvii, 190
‘Big Lie, The’, 381
biological dosimetry, 188, 362
biological protection shield, 443, 444
blame for accident, 254–56, 332; Brukhanov is charged and arrested, 269–70; operating personnel, 264, 267, 270, 432–33; Politburo pronounces sentence, 270–71
Blix, Hans, 213, 255, 315, 347; at conference in Kiev (1988), 408; inspects ruined reactor, 239, 408
blood analyses, 351, 411
Bojcun, Marko, xxii
bone-marrow transplants, 191, 195–96, 198, 220; equipment for, from the United states, 196, 202
Borodin, see Kurchatov, Igor
boron, 140, 164
boron control rods, 38
Bortin, Mortimer, 198
boulbash, 384
Brezhnev, Leonid, 67
British Atomic Energy Authority, 20, 233
British National Radiological Protection Board, 458
Brize, Judge Raimond, 301–3, 308–9
Brosilovka, 402–3
Brukhanov, Valentina, 310, 429; health of, five years after accident, 439, 449
Brukhanov, Victor: arrest and trial, 300–11; arrives at station, 100; awards, 63; blamed for accident, 254; charged and arrested, 269; and communist party, 40–42, 268; director of construction at Chernobyl, 37–38; distracted from running station, 49; exonerated and freed from prison, 436–37, 448–49; first told of explosion, 100; publicly disgraced, 267; recruits operating personnel, 43–44; reports accident to superiors, 101; under pressure from Moscow, 74–75
Bryansk, 400
‘bubbler pools’, 19; liquidation procedures, 285; drained after accident, 177–81
Budko, Valentin, 381–82
Buldakov, Dr, 421
Bulganin, 11
burns, 189–90, 209
caesium 137; absorption of, via food chain, 317; ground contamination by, 152, 173, 252; half-life of, xxviii
cancers: caused by acute radiation exposure, 155–56; deaths from, 458; predicted over 60 years, 361; predicted over 30 years, 374; report of International Advisory Committee, 410–12; Soviets deny change in development of, 315–16; see also thyroid glands
casualties: final number, 317; medical treatment, 190–91; numbers hospitalized, 189; radioactive emissions from, 195; rumours about, 233; sent to hospitals in Moscow, 189; sent to sanatoriums, 223; symptoms, 189–90; see also fatalities
cataracts, 352, 401, 412
causes of the accident: determined,
165–68; human error, xxiv, 264–67, 269–71, 432–33; INSAG-7 report, 457–58; investigations into, 253–55; report by Steinberg (May 1991), 432–34
Centre of Radiation Medicine, 373
Central Committee, 110; department of ideology abolished, 366; and powers of patronage, 427; secrecy imposed by, 327–28
Champlin, Dick, 201–2, 210
channel-type reactor (RBMK), see RBMK reactors
Chazov, Yevgeni, 155, 201, 315, 317
Checherov, Konstantin, 443
Chelyabinsk, 436
Cheremoshnaya, 297
Chernobyl: A Documentary Story, xxii
Chernobyl and Nuclear Power in the USSR, xxii
Chernobyl Commission, 397
Chernobyl Disaster, The, xxii
Chernobyl Help, 395, 458; complaints about, 395–96
Chernobyl: Insight from the Inside, xxiii
Chernobyl Law, 397; compensation for victims, 397–98; limits for relocation of people, 418–19
Chernobyl nuclear power station: construction of: first unit, 49, 52, fourth unit (1983), 65, second unit, 53, third unit, 56, concealment of problems, 60–61; contingency plans for accidents, 56; control of reactors, 54–55; deficiencies of the system, 60–61; description of, 46; difficulties: with reactors themselves, 74, supply problems, 39, 60–61, 71–72, with the work force, 42–43; emergency core-cooling system, 39; engineers at, 49–51; explosion in core of first reactor (1982), 56–57; Kizima made head of construction, 42; modifications to later reactors, 54; operating personnel recruited, 43–44; overall design of, 38–39; overmanning at, 59; probability of an accident, 56; reactor core, 38; safety of, 54; safety tests on turbines, 64; shutdown of fourth reactor, 75–76; site chosen for, 36; tests on the turbogenerators, 76; instability at low power, 55; violations of regulations, 64–65
Chernobyl nuclear power station explosion, events leading up to, 77–96; confusion after, 87–89; emergency system disconnected, 78; explosion occurs, 85–88; first efforts at damage control, 92–96; dosimeters fixed at maximum reading, 96; shutdown: Akimov pushes emergency AZ button, 85, automatic shutdown overridden, 85, control rods jammed, 83–84, fourth reactor power reduction started, 78, postponed, 79, reactivity gauge positive, 86, reactor falls into iodine well, 83, reactor’s power rises, 84; special type clothing worn at station, 81; those present at time of shutdown and test, 82–83