This magnificent book tells the epic horror story of the Chernobyl disaster that began in Reactor Number Four near midnight on April 25, 1986. In 1970, thirty-three year old Soviet engineer Viktor Brukhanov, was tasked with building the world's largest nuclear power station in Chernobyl, Ukraine. Fifteen years later, he was in charge of four 1,000 megawatt reactors and thousands of workers. There was a hospital, fifteen kindergartens, a cinema, beauty parlor, yacht club and fully stocked stores in the town of Pripyat, that supported the station. The reactors had been built during what came to be known as the Era of Stagnation, and corners had been cut. The quality of the staffing had materially declined from the early days. The Chief Engineer was taking courses in nuclear power through a correspondence course. Nonetheless, Chernobyl was the pride of the USSR. Brukhanov was slated to receive the Order of Lenin on May 1, 1986.
To control a nuclear reaction, create electricity and not trigger an explosion, there must be control rods, neutron moderators and a coolant to remove excess heat. Graphite/water coolant systems were the oldest, easiest, cheapest, and the default in the Soviet system. Nuclear programs derived from military projects adopted ultra-secrecy as a fundamental policy. This was true in the west but more so in the USSR. The USSR's paranoid commitment to secrecy meant that when scientists discovered design flaws in the reactors, no one was told and no steps were taken to fix the mistakes of the past. It meant sweeping matters under the rug, even when 14 men were boiled to death in one night at a plant in Balakovo, Russia.
Number Four had gone on line in 1983 without its final safety inspection, as the goal of finishing on time was more important than the required tests. Delay after delay meant that the deferred safety test finally would happen the 25th of April three years later. In order to satisfy electricity demand in the Kiev region, the test was pushed off until late in the night. The engineers began to "power down" the reactor, a step was missed and at 28 minutes after midnight, the unit powered down too quickly to 1% of its thermal capacity. Rods were pulled up and and power restored, but the coolant system was overwhelmed. The reactor was then properly shut down. Overheating led to a power surge, and within seconds, the system was at 100 times thermal capacity. Temperatures of 3000 degrees centigrade melted the protective shields, the building began to shake and at 1:24 AM, an explosion equal to 60 tons of TNT blew the reactor and its housing apart. What was left of an unshielded nuclear reactor lay exposed to the atmosphere.
The para-military firefighters stationed just outside the plant and first responders as far away as Kiev rushed to the scene. The operators attempted to put out fires and tirelessly worked to assure that the burgeoning disaster did not spread to the other three reactors. Even while those at Number Four began to fall from astronomical doses of radiation, Brukhanov and other managers failed to order an evacuation of Pripyat and its 50,000 residents because they did not believe a meltdown could occur. By the morning, the visible fires were out but the reactor was gone. "In its place was a simmering volcano of uranium fuel and graphite - a radioactive blaze that would prove all but impossible to extinguish."
Within the Soviet system, a General Radiation Alert was the maximum possible emergency, and in response, the system reacted quickly and according to plan. Specialists from around the country were mobilized to go to Chernobyl. Unfortunately, Soviet politics slowed down the decision to evacuate Pripyat. Saturday evening saw a second explosion as the core of Number Four exposed to the air turned a ruby red and sent white geysers into the night sky. The evacuation of the seriously injured and the atomgrad of Pripyat began on Sunday. Helicopter pilots began circling the reactor, hovering over it as it emitted deadly doses of radiation while soldiers dropped bags of clay, sand, lead, dolomite and boron to stop the spread of a modern nuclear nightmare.
Twenty million curies of radioactivity were alight and spreading northwest toward Scandinavia. That began to set off alarms on Sunday in Sweden. Although there was a 26 word admission of an accident announced on Monday, the USSR, notwithstanding the new era of glasnost, went into full secrecy mode. A week into the containment effort, 4600 tons had been dropped on Reactor Four, the radiation levels had not abated. Effort after effort, innumerable committees, heroic pilots, civil defensemen, firefighters, literally anyone who could be mobilized was thrown at the Reactor and nothing improved. The government was concerned about poisoning and evacuating the entire western half of the USSR. People began to flee Kiev. On May 8th, the water under the reactor was drained away, thus eliminating the potential of a steam explosion. Nonetheless, the fear of the reactor boring down into the earth, the hypothetical China syndrome, remained the number one concern. At the Moscow hospital where the worst had been taken, the deaths began on May 10th. The temperatures in Number Four were coming down, and in late May, the country began to plan to build a sarcophagus over the reactor. "By the beginning of June, the thirty-kilometer exclusion zone had become had become a radioactive battlefield encircled by a besieging army." A fifth of Kiev's population, including 363,000 children, were evacuated to the east in June.
The Soviet state was quick to investigate the calamity and equally quick to assess blame. Those in high places responsible for the design of the reactors were dismissed from their jobs, all planned future reactors were cancelled, and directions were given for the modification of any reactors in service. Most of the blame was heaped on the operators, many of whom were already dead, and Viktor Brukhanov was relieved of his job and party card. Before the sarcophagus over Four could be closed, the highly radioactive debris that had been blown onto the roof of Three had to be removed. Helicopters and robots had failed. The only solution was to order men up there to sweep the waste into Four. Over three thousand men participated and accomplished the task. The general overseeing it from too proximate a location collapsed after completion. Nonetheless, Reactor One* was turned on and nuclear generated electricity flowed into the system. On Nov. 30th, Reactor Number Four was officially sealed off.
In September, the official and final bodycount was announced at 31. Throughout the fall, almost 30,000 people were allowed back into Pripyat to recover personal belongings. In one of the final show trials in the USSR's long history, Brukhanov and five colleagues were tried and convicted. Penalties ran from two years in prison to ten in a penal colony. Amazingly, by the end of 1987, Reactors One, Two and Three were back up and running. And, the reactionary managers of the decaying empire continued to deny, denigrate, dismiss and blame the west for the ongoing political and economic fallout occasioned by the USSR's seventy years of incompetence and deceit. The state staggered to its knees and soon collapsed. Over half-a-million men and women were officially designated as 'liquidators' for their role in the cleanup, and like the veterans of the The Great Patriotic War, promised lifetime medical attention. It was never provided and tens of thousands died in middle age. Around the world, nuclear projects were abandoned.
Thirty years later, the exclusion zone had been reconquered by nature and had been stripped of anything of value by looters. A skeleton work force still monitors the facilities. For years after the accident, scientists explored the sarcophagus in an effort to find out what had happened and where the uranium was. They eventually concluded that the combination of materials in Number Four formed a hideous lava that came within feet of penetrating the floor of the building and entering the earth. Eventually, an international commission spread the blame for the fiasco well beyond some of the operators' mistakes and added the design of the plant and the dishonest system that pushed middle management to meet absurd goals and cut corners. By 2004, Ukraine and Belarus expanded the exclusion zone to 4,700 square kilometers. The consequences throughout Europe have been severe, with some meat and dairy products still not fit for consumption today. Because there is no one in the zone to hunt, it has become a sort of sanctuary and wildlife refuge where species prosper, and in many cases, have robustly survived the experience. Notwithstanding Chernobyl and Fukushima, nuclear power is increasingly viewed as a viable alternative to fossil fuels and is being aggressively researched in the US and China. Financed by the European Bank of Construction and Development, the New Safe Confinement enclosed Reactor Four last year in the hope of keeping the area safe for a hundred years.
Within the last month, I read an op-ed in the NYTimes extolling nuclear powered electricity as the answer to climate change. I understand that some of the minerals being researched have half-lives in the hundreds of years. But when uranium and plutonium have half-lives in the tens of thousands of years, I personally have little faith in our species' ability to safely marshal these materials for hundreds of more years, if ever.
*All three reactors were eventually put back in service, but closed down permanently by Ukraine in 2000
To control a nuclear reaction, create electricity and not trigger an explosion, there must be control rods, neutron moderators and a coolant to remove excess heat. Graphite/water coolant systems were the oldest, easiest, cheapest, and the default in the Soviet system. Nuclear programs derived from military projects adopted ultra-secrecy as a fundamental policy. This was true in the west but more so in the USSR. The USSR's paranoid commitment to secrecy meant that when scientists discovered design flaws in the reactors, no one was told and no steps were taken to fix the mistakes of the past. It meant sweeping matters under the rug, even when 14 men were boiled to death in one night at a plant in Balakovo, Russia.
Number Four had gone on line in 1983 without its final safety inspection, as the goal of finishing on time was more important than the required tests. Delay after delay meant that the deferred safety test finally would happen the 25th of April three years later. In order to satisfy electricity demand in the Kiev region, the test was pushed off until late in the night. The engineers began to "power down" the reactor, a step was missed and at 28 minutes after midnight, the unit powered down too quickly to 1% of its thermal capacity. Rods were pulled up and and power restored, but the coolant system was overwhelmed. The reactor was then properly shut down. Overheating led to a power surge, and within seconds, the system was at 100 times thermal capacity. Temperatures of 3000 degrees centigrade melted the protective shields, the building began to shake and at 1:24 AM, an explosion equal to 60 tons of TNT blew the reactor and its housing apart. What was left of an unshielded nuclear reactor lay exposed to the atmosphere.
The para-military firefighters stationed just outside the plant and first responders as far away as Kiev rushed to the scene. The operators attempted to put out fires and tirelessly worked to assure that the burgeoning disaster did not spread to the other three reactors. Even while those at Number Four began to fall from astronomical doses of radiation, Brukhanov and other managers failed to order an evacuation of Pripyat and its 50,000 residents because they did not believe a meltdown could occur. By the morning, the visible fires were out but the reactor was gone. "In its place was a simmering volcano of uranium fuel and graphite - a radioactive blaze that would prove all but impossible to extinguish."
Within the Soviet system, a General Radiation Alert was the maximum possible emergency, and in response, the system reacted quickly and according to plan. Specialists from around the country were mobilized to go to Chernobyl. Unfortunately, Soviet politics slowed down the decision to evacuate Pripyat. Saturday evening saw a second explosion as the core of Number Four exposed to the air turned a ruby red and sent white geysers into the night sky. The evacuation of the seriously injured and the atomgrad of Pripyat began on Sunday. Helicopter pilots began circling the reactor, hovering over it as it emitted deadly doses of radiation while soldiers dropped bags of clay, sand, lead, dolomite and boron to stop the spread of a modern nuclear nightmare.
Twenty million curies of radioactivity were alight and spreading northwest toward Scandinavia. That began to set off alarms on Sunday in Sweden. Although there was a 26 word admission of an accident announced on Monday, the USSR, notwithstanding the new era of glasnost, went into full secrecy mode. A week into the containment effort, 4600 tons had been dropped on Reactor Four, the radiation levels had not abated. Effort after effort, innumerable committees, heroic pilots, civil defensemen, firefighters, literally anyone who could be mobilized was thrown at the Reactor and nothing improved. The government was concerned about poisoning and evacuating the entire western half of the USSR. People began to flee Kiev. On May 8th, the water under the reactor was drained away, thus eliminating the potential of a steam explosion. Nonetheless, the fear of the reactor boring down into the earth, the hypothetical China syndrome, remained the number one concern. At the Moscow hospital where the worst had been taken, the deaths began on May 10th. The temperatures in Number Four were coming down, and in late May, the country began to plan to build a sarcophagus over the reactor. "By the beginning of June, the thirty-kilometer exclusion zone had become had become a radioactive battlefield encircled by a besieging army." A fifth of Kiev's population, including 363,000 children, were evacuated to the east in June.
The Soviet state was quick to investigate the calamity and equally quick to assess blame. Those in high places responsible for the design of the reactors were dismissed from their jobs, all planned future reactors were cancelled, and directions were given for the modification of any reactors in service. Most of the blame was heaped on the operators, many of whom were already dead, and Viktor Brukhanov was relieved of his job and party card. Before the sarcophagus over Four could be closed, the highly radioactive debris that had been blown onto the roof of Three had to be removed. Helicopters and robots had failed. The only solution was to order men up there to sweep the waste into Four. Over three thousand men participated and accomplished the task. The general overseeing it from too proximate a location collapsed after completion. Nonetheless, Reactor One* was turned on and nuclear generated electricity flowed into the system. On Nov. 30th, Reactor Number Four was officially sealed off.
In September, the official and final bodycount was announced at 31. Throughout the fall, almost 30,000 people were allowed back into Pripyat to recover personal belongings. In one of the final show trials in the USSR's long history, Brukhanov and five colleagues were tried and convicted. Penalties ran from two years in prison to ten in a penal colony. Amazingly, by the end of 1987, Reactors One, Two and Three were back up and running. And, the reactionary managers of the decaying empire continued to deny, denigrate, dismiss and blame the west for the ongoing political and economic fallout occasioned by the USSR's seventy years of incompetence and deceit. The state staggered to its knees and soon collapsed. Over half-a-million men and women were officially designated as 'liquidators' for their role in the cleanup, and like the veterans of the The Great Patriotic War, promised lifetime medical attention. It was never provided and tens of thousands died in middle age. Around the world, nuclear projects were abandoned.
Thirty years later, the exclusion zone had been reconquered by nature and had been stripped of anything of value by looters. A skeleton work force still monitors the facilities. For years after the accident, scientists explored the sarcophagus in an effort to find out what had happened and where the uranium was. They eventually concluded that the combination of materials in Number Four formed a hideous lava that came within feet of penetrating the floor of the building and entering the earth. Eventually, an international commission spread the blame for the fiasco well beyond some of the operators' mistakes and added the design of the plant and the dishonest system that pushed middle management to meet absurd goals and cut corners. By 2004, Ukraine and Belarus expanded the exclusion zone to 4,700 square kilometers. The consequences throughout Europe have been severe, with some meat and dairy products still not fit for consumption today. Because there is no one in the zone to hunt, it has become a sort of sanctuary and wildlife refuge where species prosper, and in many cases, have robustly survived the experience. Notwithstanding Chernobyl and Fukushima, nuclear power is increasingly viewed as a viable alternative to fossil fuels and is being aggressively researched in the US and China. Financed by the European Bank of Construction and Development, the New Safe Confinement enclosed Reactor Four last year in the hope of keeping the area safe for a hundred years.
Within the last month, I read an op-ed in the NYTimes extolling nuclear powered electricity as the answer to climate change. I understand that some of the minerals being researched have half-lives in the hundreds of years. But when uranium and plutonium have half-lives in the tens of thousands of years, I personally have little faith in our species' ability to safely marshal these materials for hundreds of more years, if ever.
*All three reactors were eventually put back in service, but closed down permanently by Ukraine in 2000
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