This blog is dedicaded to the text that comes from academician V.Legasov audio tapes which he recorded after the Chernobyl accident and not long before his death.
On the 2nd of May, the Government commission was already in Chernobyl.
Nikolay Ivanovich Ryzhkov and Egor Kuzmich Ligachev arrived at the exclusion
zone. Their arrival had a great significance. One day prior to their arrival
the Government commission had decided to continue the evacuation from an
area within
. This decision was based on a prediction of radioactivity spreading and
analysis of current situation on the eve of the 2nd of May.
After our high-ranked guests had arrived, they deliberately started their
visit from the places where evacuees had been placed. Then on the 2nd of
May, they took part in the meeting carried out in the Chernobyl regional
party committee together with comrade Scherbicky (who was here for the first
time). Before that, the entire Ukraine Government was very actively and
successfully represented by the Ukraine Chairman Deputy Nikolaev. This was a
very important meeting. Firstly, thanks to our reports and I was a reporter,
they understood the situation, understood that this was not an average
accident but a high-scale disaster that will have long-term consequences,
and that enormous amounts of work would be required to continue the
localisation of the 4th block as well as to decontaminate the area and to
build a shelter for the wrecked 4th block. An assessment of the situation
was also needed, as well as considering the reactivation of the 1st, 2nd and
3rd blocks. And finally analyze the possibility of continuing the
construction of 5th and 6th blocks. These questions were drafted out then.
We also spotted an increase in radiation levels in Kiev and other cities
which were quite some distance away from Chernobyl.
The party members and the government were quite worried about all this. That
is why they came to personally sort these matters out at the location. After
we had described the situation, the pivotal decisions were made. These
decisions determined the entire order of organisational work for the rest of
the period. The scale of the work, how all the organizations and the
government itself perceived it.
The operative group led by Nikolai Ivanovich Ryzhkov was created and almost
the entire Soviet industry was allocated to the disaster.
From that moment the Government Commission became only an administrative
mechanism for that huge government work that was done under the control of
the Operative group of the CCCPSU. The operative group held regular meetings
where it was reported to about the radiation levels at each measurement
point, all the details about the tasks being performed. In other words, I
didn't know any big or small event that the Operative group of politburo
didn't know about. Except for Nikolai Ivanovich Rizhkov, the Operative group
consisted of Yegor Kuzmich Ligachev, comrade Scherbikov, comrade Vorotnikov,
comrade Vlasov - the minister of foreign affairs, Vladimir Ivanovich Dolgikh
- secretary of the CCCPSU who on behalf of the Central Committee supervised
all the events performed within the ChNPP and in atom energetics as a whole.
As it seemed to me, he was doing that 24\7 without leaving aside his
assigned other tasks.
I must say that at multiple times that I attended the Operative group
meetings, these meetings were held in a very calm and conservative manner.
They tried as much as they could to base their decisions on the specialists’
point of view. However they also compared what many specialists say. In
summary, for me it was an example of a correctly set up workflow. You know,
I couldn't even assume that the Operative group would make such
strong-willed purposeful decisions. These decisions were targeted solely to
deal with the situation faster, lessen the consequences. The work was like a
well organized science team.
First - carefully studying the available information. Preferably information
obtained from multiple sources and there were cases when the military had
provided information that was different from what the civil services had
given. This was especially the case for the radioactive outbursts in the 4th
block - different services had been providing different information in the
first stages of localization.
For example, different groups in June provided different estimates of the
radioactivity that had escaped the 4th block.
In another instance, the GeoChem institute had provided report approved by
academician Velikhov, that was based on their measurements that more than
50% of the reactor’s contents had escaped its core and the Chernobyl power
plant territory. They had estimated a colossal plutonium spreading zone on
the territory of the Soviet Union.
The second group of specialists, who was working under the instruction of
Lev Dmitrievich Ryabev, consisted of radiation institute staff of Ministry
of Medium Machinebuilding, was measuring the activity only in some hydro
physical points around the station. And they estimated the escaped fuel by
the activity within their measured points.
Of course, this was wrong. The self absorption was not taken into account as
well as many other factors. But nevertheless, judging by this basic overview
they also had concluded that around half of fuel was inside the reactor and
another half had escaped.
FInally the third group of specialists, which in the most thorough way had
researched all the maps from Government Hydro Metric service, integrated all
the activity from land-based and air services, comparing that to data that
was received from abroad. They could not get any more than 3-4% of
radioactivity that had escaped the 4th block.
All this information was accumulated in my sub-group and had practical
effect on what actions and effort should we assign to decontamination and
disposal works.
Because of these differences a commission had to be formed and Anatoly
Petrovich was asked to be an arbitrator to search for mistakes. In the end
it appeared that the GeoChem group was wrong, because their samples were
taken in such a condition that they had included plutonium used in weapons
coming from nuclear explosion period. These inaccuracies were accounted for,
but that approach itself was not accurate.
Eventually all came to the following number: between 3% to 4% of the fuel
was thrown out of the 4th block reactor. But during that period it created
quite a tense situation. The Operative group itself however didn’t show any
tension at all. They just constantly performed more measurements, more
elaborations and tried their best to understand the actual conditions.
During this time the Operative group was constantly trying to provide
maximum protection for the people and judging from possible degrees of
contamination decide on a compensation amount that would be necessary for
the evacuees. I repeat that and I personally was a witness to that. They
made many decisions specifically to help people who were affected by this
accident. This is true for each and any case.
Another thing that surprised me about the Operative group is that it never
tried to be secretive about their decisions. For example, decisions of some
sort were taken like the launch date of 1st and 2nd blocks, or sarcophagus
completion time, or works on 5th or 6th blocks, or Pripyat conservation
decisions. Such decisions were adopted, but if some experimental data
appeared that showed that the conservation of Pripyat could be avoided and
it could be decontamination and even inhabited later, then the Operative
would change their decisions according to new data, without seeing something
bad in that change.
Nikolai Ivanovich Ryzhkov had been on ChNPP many times . The Operative group
had to take many decisions about accepting or rejecting help from abroad,
that was proposed at some time.
I wanted to say that aloud. But now recalling those days of May, I must say
that after N.I.Ryzhkov and E.K.Ligachev had visited the accident sites and
verified the situation, we received a command: the composition of the
Government commission should be changed.
Boris Eudokimovich [Scherbina] remained the leader of the Government
commission, but a decision was made that all further work on the site would
be performed by a second group. While the first group would go to Moscow, on
the site the second group would be led by the chairman of the Ministry
Council
Ivan Stepanovich Silaev.
The entire group of the first Government commission departed, but Scherbina
asked me and comrade Sidorenko to stay back for a while to finish the work.
Sidorenko had to investigate the causes of the accident and I had- to finish
the localization work on the 4th block. Formally however I had to be
replaced in Silaev’s team by Eugeny Petrovich Ryazantsev - deputy of the
director of our Nuclear Energy Institute. He had arrived and then
unexpectedly Eugeny Pavlovich Velikhov appeared in this group, I don’t even
know on which command.
I must say a few words here...
Eugeny Pavlovich Velihov who as it seemed was watching too much TV about the
“China syndrome”, arrived with concerns which I reported to Rizhkov and
Ligachev. We were worried about the uncertainty of geometric shape of the
remains of the reactor. It was clear that heat was being generated inside
this fuel mass. The heating up could continue and some vertical movement of
this fuel mass may occur. In particular, we were worried about two things:
can that movement cause critical mass buildup in some region which would
produce short-living isotopes. This was our first thing to worry about,
however we were hoping that the large amounts of Boron (40 tons) that was
dropped into the reactor would be more or less evenly mixed with the fuel
and help prevent critical mass buildup. However we could not fully eliminate
the possibility that such local “reactors” would appear. That was the first
problem. And the second one was that the temperatures can be too high within
these masses. Some construction elements of the lower part of reactor may
not withstand that. Concrete may fail due to high temperatures. Part of fuel
can get into the barboteurs, be it lower or upper one and we did not know at
that time whether there was water or not. We feared that if a considerable
amount of fuel gets there, then extensive vaporization would carry out
additional radioactive aerosols and contaminate more territory.
These problems were what we were worried about. That’s why with Ivan
Stepanovich Silaev, who by this time had replaced Scherbina, we decided to:
first, get some information about the levels of water in the lower
barboteur. This was a difficult task which was fulfilled heroically by the
station personnel. And it was found that the water was indeed there. So the
necessary measures were taken to remove that water from there. I want to
stress that out once more: we removed the water just to avoid massive
evaporation. It was absolutely clear to us that no explosion was possible,
only evaporation that would carry out radioactive particles - that’s all.
So just in case, the water should be removed and in case the fuel mass would
melt it’s way down into these rooms, we could pump the water back there, to
cool the molten fuel masses.
These decisions were accepted and written down in session protocols. But
then Eugeny Pavlovich appeared and started talking about this “China
syndrome” and those barboteurs; - lower and upper ones, that they could melt
through and some fuel could get through them into the soil and into the
groundwater.
Groundwater was only 32 meters deep under the Chernobyl station. In this
particular aspect the station was rather poorly placed. Should the fuel get
there, it would contaminate a considerable part of water in Ukraine.
Probability of such an event was extremely low, nevertheless, as a
preventive measure and after some debate, the work to prevent this was
approved, despite most of specialists being in doubt whether it was needed
or not. Nevertheless Eugeny Pavlovich insisted on performing this work that
is constructing a concrete bed under the reactor . To accomplish this,
miners worked very hard led personally by the minister of coal industry
comrade
Schadrin
and his specialists led by comrade Brezhnev from the Ministry of special
heavy building who created the required tunnels under the 4th block. These
tunnels were to be used to construct that concrete bed which had a cooling
feature. This job was constructed and built in a very short period, but was
completely useless, because no fuel got there and nothing had to be cooled.
Somewhere around the 10th day of May, Vyacheslav Dmitrievich Svetliy
arrived, who was called by Velikhov. Svetliy brought a case with samples of
various materials that had been melted using a laser or as a molten mass.
This all had some psychological effect on Ivan Stepanovich Silaev and he
authorized the
.
Vehicle decontamination site
All in all these measures were excessive. But at the time it was
understandable that they were preventative just in case some mass got
through by accident. This also had a considerable psychological effect on
the population, demonstrating that measures were being taken to protect the
groundwater. But from my point of view, why I wasn’t an active supporter of
this idea or even active opposer of it is because these jobs would require a
lot of machinery to be concentrated in the zone. For that concrete supply
had to be organized. Test what vehicles would be best-suited for the job
within those conditions. Vehicle decontamination sites had to be organized
and it had to be ascertained if they could even be fully decontaminated .
What conditions should be prepared for the people that would work on that
site and for how long should they stay there. And because the sarcophagus
projects were just in the beginning of design stage, it was unclear what
machinery and how much of it would it require.
But how to construct the concrete plate under the reactor - this was totally
unknown to us. For me it seemed to be important that during this proactive
stage the measures to supply people, to create proper living conditions for
them, to gather experience for such a large scale work organisation. Because
of that it seems that all the decisions were correct.
Entirely another case was when Eugeny Pavlovich proposed to construct
another such plate under the wreck that was outside of the 4th block. And it
seemed to him that there was also a lot of fuel. For this he we would have
to allocate another ten thousand of subway builders, get them here to do
that work. In this case I could not stand it so I wrote a very angry letter
together with Anatoly Pavlovich where we strongly objected this excessive
allocation of people who would get high radiation doses when constructing
that second plate. Of course there was
because we more or less knew where most of the radioactivity was distributed
around each reactor zone.
Groundwater protection became one of our most important problems immediately
around May. Because the Pripyat river by itself formed a considerable water
basin, but even more - it was flowing into the Dnieper river. Well one does
not have to explain about Dnieper. I will repeat myself that groundwater was
relatively close to the surface under the station. So after it became clear
that casualties of this accident were like hundreds of people, while tens
were heavily injured and all the rest were curable - our main problem was to
make sure the population safety around the Dnieper basin. This was sort of
central, very important task. Ofcourse, water contamination measurements
were carried out constantly.
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