They left me. In the accident, no one was killed or exposed to radiation. After that, Ukraine representatives, comrade Plyusch and comrade Nikolaev, started to prepare for the evacuation of the city scheduled for the next day. An accident is possible in which organophosphorus compounds form, a single breath of which is lethal. The logic behind our process of decision-making was as follows. The 5th block was almost ready and could practically be launched within a few months after decontamination, and the 6th block was in the initial stage. Then there was another mistake. Anatoly Petrovich had a deputy for nuclear energy earlier, Eugeny Petrovich Ryazantsev. really knew about the accident, informed me that an alarming a serious signal, encrypted according to the order established in, In this case, there was a signal of 1; 2; 3; 4, which meant that the station, had a situation with nuclear danger; radiation hazard; fire danger; and an. The initial organization of clear and reliable communication; this was done practically within a day. We got into the cars and set off. As a result, one project alone, of the three successful projects that cost us 17 million roubles, began to generate an annual income of 114 million roubles.For four years now, the corresponding industry and technology have been working. Of course, the conditions were worsening every day. From a safety point of view, it even stood out as being better, as I understood from the discussions. I once heard from Ponomaryev-Stepnoy Nikolai Nikolaevich (he was a Deputy Director of Nuclear Energy, now the First Deputy). In fairness, I must say that many experts of the Soviet Union spoke, and very actively spoke, against the construction of nuclear power plants without containments. The last time this was observed was on the 9th or 10th of May. All these measures were, and I repeat myself, planned on the evening of the 26th of April. And mainly, the chronology of the events themselves was not presented. But getting less and less overall. This is how the conditions for such disasters were created. But nevertheless, they were minimized thanks to the actions of the military centre, that worked in collaboration with scientific organisations of the USSR Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Nuclear Energy and Kiev research organisations. operation , held in this or that place of our numerous Ministry. A decision was made to build the city of Slavutych because it was clear from the beginning that the shift work method could only be used temporarily at the nuclear power plant. And this part is tragic, confusing and incomprehensible ", - from Valery Legasov's tapes. Two explosions happened and caused the destruction of the reactor building. Two, make the operation maximally reliable; trained staff, good discipline, easy-to-operate equipment, etc. In my opinion, it was unlikely. As it seemed to me, he was doing that 24\7 without leaving aside his assigned other tasks. But additionally, any person that had been on an NPP construction site was surprised at the potential of work being done so carelessly, even on such an important project. It was not taken into account that after the nuclear facilities move from limited industrial environment to wide usage in civil nuclear energy, the conditions will change drastically. Here I need to pay tribute to comrade Schekalov, the expert from the Institute of Nuclear Energy, and also to the experts from the Ukrainian (Kiev) Institute of Nuclear Research, who made great efforts to find the appropriate paths, put in the necessary sensors, and stretch cables to them. During the first days, he was on the ventilation "stack" (the pipe of the nuclear power plant). The most contaminated areas had either been cleared or concreted for the builders to begin their work on the sarcophagus construction. The temperature inside the destroyed block would be limited by the temperature of the burning graphite, which is round about 1,500C or slightly higher. Although, of course, there were cases, some amusing and some tragic, that I witnessed with my own eyes. The scientific part of the team, who were responsible for the correctness of decisions, made these decisions without the support of Moscow, Kiev, or Leningrad. All the work was transferred to the revised composition of the first Government Commission (the one led by Boris Yevdokimovich Shcherbina) that had been approved. These were some of the smaller issues. In it was an article criticizing the French for their active cooperation (an attempt of cooperation) with the Soviet Union in the field of nuclear technology. They started flyovers above reactor number 4 to assess the situation. What went on at the Chernobyl station itself for many years: conducting, so to say, experiments the plans for which were made very carelessly and sloppily. Thank God, I am already cured. Then the transfer, unwarranted transfer of experience from the military industry to domestic infrastructure. We, as experts, were saying that. Kuzmin and my work can be used here that considers this particular questionwhether it is possible to do without nuclear sources in our country which is so rich in fossil fueland shows that it is impossible. All this must be described in the most thorough and detailed manner. [12]:261 He received the degree of Candidate in 1967 and his doctorate in chemistry in 1972. In Kiev, after we got off our plane, what surprised us was a long line of black government cars and an anxious crowd of various Ukrainian chairmen, led by comrade Lyashko Aleksander Petrovich. And perhaps they should bear criminal responsibility for it. It was necessary to immediately work on zone-wise decontamination, following the guideline of going from the most contaminated areas to the less contaminated ones. But here everything was so quick and sudden that. And this was not long before the Chernobyl disaster. And that we are starting to research the cause of this phenomenon which, it needs to be said, is not clear to us. What did they need to do in such a situation? Also, the fundamental lack of containment, as practice has shown, cannot be compensated by the tightly sealed compartments. After decontamination was carried out, the level of activity in this room lowered but still remained relatively high, reaching tens and sometimes hundreds of milliroentgens per hour at certain spots and up to a roentgen per hour at other spots in the engine room. Well, because no one knew exactly what had happened. Three or four or up to ten tons of TNT, this is the maximum that can be said. Because the final decisions were taken collectively by the Government Commission or by Shcherbina personally. It will be simple or difficult to be there, in place, in general, all our. Also, there are, of course, specific culprits. The number was increasing because the scouts were visiting more and more new areas, while the old areas were receiving more and more radionuclide fallout. They ran away. We want to tell you the untold and hidden truth of the Chernobyl disaster. According to their regulations, they did not have the right to declare an evacuation based on the data available to them at 11 pm. Very interestingly, the station staff consisted of 45 people, if I recall correctly, who had to plan the reloading operation; that is they planned who, of the people that didn't work at the station, had to participate in the reloading. This project would have cost billions and such a canal would have passed through Belorussia. It is said that this was a poor and thoughtless decision - this is not true. Any approach to nuclear safety of a technologically complex and potentially dangerous device must have three elements. The period of August and September was a period of active preparation to launch the 1st and 2nd blocks of ChNPP. And it used the heat from the reactor to melt. Also, we didnt know the exact temperatures at various points of the destroyed Chernobyl reactor. Boris Yevdokimovich probably made a mistake but it is hard to say. Velikhov spoke with him once, in my presence, on the situation. This is how many felt, so to say, in a subtle way, that the work of the Chekists, though not conspicuous, was positive, whereas the negative, helpless work by Civil Defense was noticeable in the early days of these events. It was an integral device that had to be placed into the belly of the wrecked 4th block and would have provided continuous information about the temperature there, about radiation fields and some other parameters. I was struck by the time this station put into carrying out a refueling. However, an event occurred, of such a scale, of such involvement of people with controversial interests, of errors and victories, failures and successes. But this caused a storm in the Ministry. But the full cycle of nuclear fuel safety must be added to those requirements. According to that register, all the materials that had been tested would be handed over to the Army to use in decontamination tasks. [17] In 1983,[17] he became the first deputy director for scientific work of the Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy. And thats it. The diagnostic wells worked continuously and measured the radioactivity of the groundwater, and if required, the service wells could be turned on to pump out the contaminated water. Therefore, the fewer nuclear power plants and the more coal and oil ones we have, the higher the radioactive pollution will be under normal circumstances. And things never came to serious theory, to serious analysis, to serious strategies, which, all in all, was quite alarming. Because a nuclear power plant is easily distinguishable because of chimneys that dont emit anything. But at 11 am, it was already fully official. For example, I actually can today. But sadly, no proper scientific analysis of the actual situation took place to analyze all the possible problems and find ways to avoid them. Ivan the WHOLE. It had already been decided to assign the construction of the sarcophagus to SU 605, a department in the Ministry of Medium Machine Building; and that a thorough assessment of the internal condition of reactor number 4 had to be carried out, of the structural soundness of its remaining building, so that the project could rely on some analysis, on some verified data. The scale of the work, how all the organizations and the government itself perceived it. The responsibilities were distributed in such a way that everything that was outside of the 30-kilometre zone was controlled both from the air and from the ground by the Goskomgidromet [State Committee on Hydrometeorology] led by member-correspondent Yury Antonovich Izrael. The Government Commission worked from Pripyat for the first few days. Svetliy brought a case with samples of various materials that had been melted using a laser or as a molten mass. Says, "Undress." Adamovich: Was there a conversation about, maybe, what you would do, and you reported on that? This was just as worrying. Just think about it; we have a dozen such reactors, the Americans have 90 of them, the British have 40 and the French have 60. I think it was out of these considerations; perhaps he had other considerations. Such technical means and devices which are generally used in many military systems, in missile complexes, in nuclear weapons, had not been used. The relevant passages in Higginbotham's 'Midnight in Chernobyl' with respect to the Vienna Conference say:. The Commission arrived at 20:20 on the 26th of April. And once containment became optional, temptation arose to build another [reactor] line that would help the country without overloading the machine building industry. Why? But since the original signal was serious, the information was relayed to the Government and it established the Government Commission. Where did this come from? It was calm and peaceful there, all was ordinary. What examples did he give? So, the machine-building plants did not have enough capacity to produce the shells and other equipment for VVER reactors in the needed quantities. Media Entertainment Arts WorldWide They often practised there. [5], In 1976, Legasov was elected a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union. They signed it the next day at 11 am. I invited two or three experienced journalists to it. Helicopters dropped over 5 thousand tons of various materials onto the reactor. Unfortunately, the place where the iron shot was kept had been affected by the initial outburst of radioactive particles and was contaminated, rendering it completely unusable. And the radioactive impact of the Red Forest on the city and its surroundings sharply decreased after the said operations were carried out. You know, I was not met with understanding anywhere. Many residents later, in six or seven days, were drinking milk, Legasov: Well, somewhere. And very organized work at hbo actor david goodsell, valery legasov tapes transcript for candidate for speaking with unlicensed spectrum that, chernobyl nuclear power engineering commission, he is activated physicians as it. It was necessary to simultaneously organize a number of tasks that were of completely different types. These surveys were done for both the total amount of gamma radiation and the isotope spectrum of gamma radiation. [20][21] He had been involved in work on industrial safely with the GKNT (State Committee for Science and Technology), in which he had explored the risks involved in energy generation. Radiation conditions were evaluated, work status of dam construction, well construction, about acquiring appropriate equipment and vehicles, about the construction of the sarcophagusall this information was heard, and operational decisions were made immediately. For example, dolomite. Legasov: What didnt happen didnt happen. For two years he worked as a released secretary of the VLKSM committee, he was elected to the bureau of the Soviet District Committee of the Komsomol and to the Moscow City Committee of the Komsomol. If the philosophy that mandatorily required a containment over any type of nuclear facility had been developed, then naturally RBMK, with its geometry, with its construction, as a device would simply not have appeared. The second proposal, conversely, was to burn this entire forest down and even experiments were carried out on burning parts of this contaminated forest. But where did they go? This is only a specific example. However, the thing that I was able to achieve was to create an expert group that would perform an expert comparison between different types of devices, in terms of their economy, universality and safety. 1 Question Everyone Working in Valery Legasov Tapes Transcript Should Know How to Answer Statement And finally analyze the possibility of continuing the construction of 5th and 6th blocks. The same thing was done to all surfaces that could produce dust. Valery Legasov didn't have problems with the government. And the measures there were simple. And not that they had any experience [to draw from]. He did say that about one of the reactors, the AST, a nuclear power plant of an entirely different type, which really is the safest of all that exist in the world today; about that he said that it can be put even in Red Square. They, so to say, maintained this connection. Legasov: That tomorrow, there will be 25 or more. [THE INTERVIEW TO A.ADAMOVICH, JUDGING BY THE INSCRIPTION ON THE CASSETTES B SIDE]. This is what forced the station management, apparently out of good intentions, to perform this experiment firstly. And I supported him. He must be the designer, the engineer and the science supervisor. But, money being limited, no investments were made for 10 years. The Science and Technology Council of the institute frequently held discussions about the conceptual issues in the development of nuclear energy, but very rarely were technical aspects talked about such as the quality of the reactors, the quality of fuel, the problems that were there. Also, I think that Gorbachevs first call to Silayev was sometime after the May holidays, on the 3rd or 4th of May. I regularly upload updates as I work my way through the whole thing, so somewhere in the text below you'll find a centred phrase that explains that everything that comes after is the uncorrected text, along with the date of the latest update. At first, Sidorenko left me, and Shcherbina asked me to stay. Already the first launch of this reactor in the first RBMK unit of Leningrad NPP has shown that such a large active zone, implemented in the way it has been, was very complex for the operator. As I wrote in the proposals: the first perimeter at the station itself, a second one at a kilometre from the station, then 3-kilometre and 10-kilometre perimeters. Especially from Minister Slavsky who was literally stomping his feet, saying that these are different things, and that I am illiterate, that I dont mind my own business, and that it is wrong to compare one reactor to another of a different type. Legasov: Even during the war, when a retreat was planned from a city, it was already determined in advance who would remain undercover, who would be with the army, etc. And finally, the last but, from my perspective, the most important section. They were taken away on Sunday. And it was found that the water was indeed there. This type of device came from the Ministry of Medium Machine Building where several such devices were built for special purposes and operated in the most unique way. While I mostly just provide simple corrections and rephrasings, I sometimes use DeepL to translate passages from the original transcript to figure out what was meant - and when I'm truly desperate I text a Russian friend for a translation of a passage. Firstly, it was domestic, which meant that it was not supported by any international experience. Anywhere from one millirntgen per hour up to a maximum of tens of millirntgen per hour - obviously, this was not a healthy environment, but it did allow for some discussion about what to do next. In the tapes, Legasov claimed that Soviet government security and. Because the dosimetry service By the way, here I will take a detour and say that dosimetry was poorly organized. He was assigned to compile a report for the International Atomic Energy Agency about the causes and aftermath of the accident. I will mention only one example of his work. They were all worried, and they didnt have enough information; however, they all agreed that the situation was very bad. A proper management system had to be established for scientific research, design and execution of projects across all these very diverse areas of work. Because the discussion itself shows that there were several ways to get the reactor to the state it was in. Because such a belief prevailed that we have enough Donbass coal and that we dont need to develop nuclear energy. Another mistake was that with such technology, it is dangerous to not go the way the world is going. "[11], I feel sick thinking about exactly what is most likely to happen to us in the near future [Major industrial accidents will happen] unless the necessary measures are taken. It must be mentioned that Ukrainian comrades initially came up with a plan to create a bypass canal that would divert all the water from the Pripyat river away from the Dnieper sea. This transcript was translated into English by Yury Timofeyev, and the translation was edited by Juhi Ahluwalia, Tim Hughes and Jody Boyington; the fruit of their considerable labour can be found on their website. [17] In 1981, he became a full member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, in the Department of Physical Chemistry and Technology of Inorganic Materials. Therefore, we still cannot fully explain this phenomenon but there are such theories. 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. There were countless industry councils where something was discussed. As had been observed, a large amount of radiation had leaked out of reactor number 4, but at that time we were mostly worried about whether the reactor was still working. Nothing got farther than 12 kilometres from the station. Although I generally believe that our science and technology has developed very successfully, by hook or crook, surprising the whole world with colossal achievements in almost all fields. When on an even surface but inside strong radiation fields, their electronics, usually the control modules, failed making them inoperable. We feared that if a considerable amount of fuel gets there, then extensive vaporization would carry out additional radioactive aerosols and contaminate more territory. I understood, I must tell you honestly, that I understood that the city was being evacuated permanently. Adamovich: [UNINTELLIGIBLE QUESTION] and which system controls all this apart from the Academy? But magnesium oxide, of course, is not a metal; it conducts heat more effectively and without corroding, and the oxides it forms interfere with the oxygen concentration in the combustion zone, contributing to the cessation of combustion. The army was responsible for the work at the station itself and decontaminating villages, houses and roads in the 3-kilometre zone. There is not a single organization in the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union or in the national academies that could develop this philosophy. [7] Viktor Alekseyevich Sidorenko called for immediate evacuation of Pripyat, which Legasov supported, as the situation was expected to deteriorate in the town, and this decision was approved by Shcherbina. In this context, I want to state an opinion, of which I am fully convinced, but which, unfortunately, is not shared by my colleagues, and leads to friction between us, sometimes quite dramatically. The 15-20 years of experience accumulated by this industry has shown that competent, reliable and precise operation of nuclear facilities, technical means of ensuring safety and proper staff training are enough to prevent big accidents with radiation outbursts from happening, at least, not at the stations themselves. That is because he has a good habit of carefully listening to the specialists, quickly gasping their point, and be immediately ready to make decisions. I have already mentioned that I had proposed from the beginning to create a press group under the Government Commission that would correctly inform the population about the events that were happening, that would give the right advice. All this receded into the background in front of the will to tackle the situation as quickly as possible. I will not talk about safe reactors because the requirements formulated by Novikov are very accurate. There is a lot of confusion in the international press, for example, that Velikhov was measuring something on the roofs around the 26th, Evgeny Pavlovich [Velikhov]. This is why Chernobylnow do you see why I started from so far back?it demonstrated that in the Soviet Union, even today after having survived Chernobyl, not a single dog understands this philosophy, that is so basic and simple, the three components of which I told you, even in the nuclear industry. This sums up our containment efforts. And what if there isnt [above 25 rem] tomorrow? This was very clearly seen in such an exceptional situation. They worked very diligently, with great speed and efficiency. And this was preventing the creation of acceptable radiation conditions. Because nothing has changed so far. This would facilitate heat transfer. Various parts of fuel assemblies were visible. This is the law of the theory of safety. 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. After the meeting, I went to the office of B.E.Scherbina and asked whether this request was also addressed to me, or should I stay here in Moscow with the other GC to continue my current work? But when such cases became known, a scandal broke out. How can I listen to Valery Legasov tapes? It has everything. Luckily, Kokoshin had enough wisdom, or not enough time, to not write that article. Besides, the very fact of the appearance of this RBMK device, from the perspective of international and generally normal safety standards, was illegalthe fact of its appearance. And so there appeared a kind of natural desire to somehow minimize the spending on the rapid development of nuclear energy. As forty first year, but still in the worst variant. Say, a steam generator breaks down at some station, and they start to think about how to change its design, and, of course, come up with a solution that improves the situation. Under the mandatory condition of the most rigorous compliance with all regulations and such. This is why I believe that the beginning of the Chernobyl disaster must be counted from the slowdown of the development of nuclear energy in the late 50s and early 60s. You must always do something new, and be very critical to what was done before you. That put an end to this sort of thing. Capacities were created for the production of players capacities for metallurgy and extractive metallurgy facilities. In a shocking and humbling act of self-sacrifice, Legasov recorded everything he knew about the truth behind Chernobyl's explosion and hung himself, knowing that his sudden death would force. And above 75 rem, it is mandatory. Some supports were not strong enough and reinforcement was necessary. Since when has this mistake begun to be corrected? These were the questions we had. Dip asbestos sacks filled with polyethylene chips into appropriate solutionsthis would produce foamand then use these sacks to close the gaps on the roof of the sarcophagus. The RBMK reactor has only one protection [system], unlike the VVER reactor, which is a flagrant violation of principles, the first mistake. For this, they used both statistically reliable samples that were gathered on the sitefollowed by analysis in the radiochemical laboratories that had been deployed in Chernobyl, and some samples were sent to the institutes, the Radio Institute or the Institute of Nuclear Energyand measurements of gamma fields made using helicopters.