by Alan Rimmer
Conservative estimates put the energy release at around 50 million curies. This represents about 4,000 times as much activity as was released in the 1957 Windscale fire, and a million times as much as 1976 Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania caused by a partial meltdown in a nuclear reactor.
But because of mismanagement and a lack of monitoring equipment no-one on the site at first appeared to realise the wreck of reactor No 4 was leaking vast quantities of radioactive substances into the environment.
In the immediate aftermath about 150 people on site suffered from radiation sickness and 31 died of a variety of causes, including radiation, burns and falling masonry.
In the surrounding population most people were protected from the immediate effects because they were indoors (most in their beds), although many lived in wooden buildings which did not give as much protection as more conventional European dwellings. A woman, who was in her garden at the time, did experience symptoms of radiation sickness (sudden vomiting and extreme tiredness) within hours of the explosion.
More than 30 separate fires were caused by the explosions and there are many stories of heroic actions by the men who dealt with the immediate aftermath of the disaster.
Within five minutes the paramilitary fire brigade serving the station arrived on the scene. This was very soon reinforced by the Chernobyl town brigade who immediately attacked the fire on the roof of the turbine hall.
Without a thought for their own safety, and with no protective clothing, the fireman successfully prevented the fire from damaging unit No 3, which was separated from No 4 by just a wall.
There was no telling the consequences if that the wall had been breached. The main, and most dangerous, core fire was dealt with by 6.35. Six of the firemen were later to die of acute radiation sickness, and many others were severely affected.
In the early hours after the explosions, the health of those on site was the principle concern of the emergency authorities. Evacuation of the town of Pripyat didn’t begin until noon on April 27.
However, iodine preparations had been given to children at school on the morning of April 26, and to the rest of the town in the afternoon.
At first the well-paid company workers were stoical about what was happening. They calmly went about their business as usual. But by the late afternoon something akin to panic was beginning to set in.
Long queues formed outside emergency stations where the iodine was being distributed, and there were reports of people burning their mouths and even poisoning themselves through lack of instruction.
As the day wore on water carts began spraying the streets and stalls selling vegetables and other foodstuffs were removed.
The enormity of the disaster became more evident as night fell and the sky glowed red in the distance. At daybreak, the authorities finally ordered the evacuation of the town.
Food was left on tables and washing left on lines as more than 47,000 people began a mass exodus; within 18 hours the town was deserted.
In the days following all people within 10km of the plant had been evacuated, and by May 7, all within 30km, a total of 116,000 people from 186 settlements. The huge movement of people was swollen by the evacuation of tens of thousands of cattle as well as sundry other farm animals.
Meanwhile the shattered remains of No 4 reactor continued to burn. Tons of graphite ignited, while molten metal fissioned out of control, releasing dangerous isotopes that were sucked up into the smoke, adding to the radioactive soup above the plant.
Helicopters dumped huge loads of lead, sand and boron onto the plant in an unsuccessful attempt to staunch the conflagration. Water could not be used because it would have reacted with the graphite which would have created a huge cloud of deadly carbon monoxide.
The authorities realised the only option they had was to try to contain the fire until all the flammable material ran out. Meanwhile an enormous radioactive plume began to drift toward Pripyat --- and beyond.
Of course, none of this was known to the outside world and at first the Soviets did their best to conceal it. The first the West knew of something untoward was when the Swedes detected abnormal levels of radioactivity outside their nuclear power plant at Forsmark.
The monitors revealed five times the normal radioactive emissions. Similar reports came from other parts of Sweden as well as Finland and Norway. Sweden after hours of searching confirmed the radiation was not coming from their country.European wind patterns soon revealed the source of the radiation pointed in one direction: the Soviet Union.
When the Swedes and other Scandinavian countries demanded an explanation from Moscow, they were initially met with denials and silence. But after several hours, an expressionless newscaster on Moscow television read a statement from the Council of Ministers, which was dour and uninformative even by Soviet standards.
In full it read: “An accident has taken place at the Chernobyl power station, and one of the reactors was damaged. Measures are being taken to eliminate the consequences of the accident. Those affected by it are being given assistance. A Government commission has been set up.”
The news made sensational headlines all over the world. The more Moscow tried to conceal what had happened, the more hungry the West came for information regarding it.
Stories of a huge movement of people and animals on a biblical scale were irresistible. Newspaper editors and broadcasters scrambled for news of this mighty exodus.
Scientists, doctors and nuclear experts where wheeled out to give their opinions on what had happened, while assorted, soothsayers, religious cranks and other doomsday merchants predicted the end of the world.
Despite the best efforts of the Moscow censors, more details of what had really happened began to emerge. Finally President Gorbachev, in the spirit of glasnost, decided to open the door and let the outside world in.
He issued a decree whereby nothing was to be hidden, nothing covered up. Film was released of the helicopters above the smoking reactor ruins desperately trying to damp down the flames and footage was released of queues of evacuees being monitored for radiation at the roadside. The Novosti News Agency was given full powers to release information to Western scientists and news organisations.
One story immediately stood out among many: the heroism of the fire-fighters who had doomed themselves to certain death by entering the nuclear maelstrom without a thought for their own safety.
And one man in particular was hailed the “hero of Chernobyl”. He was Lieutenant Colonel Leonid Telyatnikov, head of the Pripyat fire brigade who was one of the first on the scene.
According to Novosti it all began for Telyatnikov at exactly 1.32am when he received a telephone call telling him there was a fire at the nuclear power plant.
He immediately dressed and rushed to his car. Driving toward the plant he had to weave round fiery debris that littered the road. As he got closer to the plant he saw a bluish glow from the remains of what had been reactor No 4.
He realised this was no ordinary situation. Telyatnikov knew he and the rest of the fire fighters were “entering the gates of hell”, but he knew what had to be done. They were the only ones who could prevent the fire spreading to reactor No 3.
At the gates, the radiation sensor had frozen at a radiation reading higher than existed in Hiroshima after the atomic bomb.
Telyatnikov and his 27-man crew pressed on nevertheless, even though they knew it was now a suicide mission. They stared up in horror at the reactor room where flames were leaping more than 50 feet into the air, and at tiny figures scurrying in panic in the exposed upper levels.
Several times Telyatniknov climbed to the 120-foot top of the blazing building to direct operations at the very heart of the blaze. He stayed there until the roof collapsed and the flames were finally extinguished.
He and his incredibly brave crew carried on until they were finally relieved by fire fighters from Kiev. The firemen along with paramedics and power-station guards who were injured were flown to Moscow
’s hospital Six where they were put into an isolation ward and enclosed in sterile plastic bubbles.
About 300 people, suffering from radiation sickness and damage to skin and lungs were later treated at the hospital. But within the first few days, 22 died following a terrible pattern of vomiting, bleeding, black blisters, hair loss and high fever, before lapsing into a coma from which they never recovered.
All over the Soviet Union the fire-fighters of Chernobyl were being treated to the kind of acclaim usually reserved for war heroes.
Two of the fire team that died were given posthumous medals. Telyatnikov, aged just 35, and a father of two, was the only survivor given permission by the authorities to talk about his ordeal.
In a screened interview from his hospital bed, speaking hardly above a whisper, he said: “The fire was raging, devouring everything. The reactor’s mouth was pouring out a death-carrying breath. But we had no choice but to stay. It was our duty.
“We didn’t know how many people were trapped and we had to stop the fire spreading to the other reactors. We found eight survivors, naked and huddled in the lavatories, miraculously still breathing.
“We stayed for three hours in the choking, blinding poisonous atmosphere and one by one my men began to buckle. I saw my comrade Vladimir Tisschura writhing on the ground and after that Nikolai Vaschuk swayed and fell flat on his back. Then a third man fell. Bravest of all was Vitali Golopa who was only 25.
“He plunged into the radioactive pool beneath the reactor to pull the plug and drain off the contaminated water. He died soon after…”
The outside world was just as enthralled by their bravery as in the Soviet Union. Messages of support and offers of medical and technical help poured in.
Ken McGinley, still pushing his own nuclear agenda back home, wasn’t going to let the opportunity pass. As far as he was concerned he and the Chernobyl firefighters were “brothers in arms” and he persuaded his local council and fire service authority in Renfrewshire to strike two bravery plaques in honour of the heroes of Chernobyl.
But he wasn’t content to send these prestigious awards via the diplomatic bag: he decided to travel to Chernobyl to personally deliver them. But he was told that was impossible. In those days the Soviet Union was still a closed society for foreigners, and even ordinary Soviet people were not allowed to travel inside their own country without permission.
In any event, the hero fire fighters were in an isolation hospital in Moscow, and virtually the whole of Ukraine and Belarus had been declared a disaster zone.
But McGinley was not to be denied: somewhere he had read the Chernobyl fire-fighters were admirers of British soccer. Using his local contacts he persuaded the players of Celtic and Rangers, Scotland’s premier soccer teams, to sign two footballs which McGinley said he wanted to present personally to the heroes of Chernobyl.
One bright morning he walked up the imposing driveway of the Soviet embassy in Kensington Palace Gardens, London, and knocked on the door. A startled security guard eventually showed him into an imposing reception room dominated by a large, ornate desk.
Sitting behind it was a dapper little diplomat who had carefully placed McGinley’s two soccer balls into the ‘In’ tray (they had been removed from McGinley to be security scanned).
With a quizzical expression he listened to the Scotsman’s request to personally deliver the objects to the heroes of Chernobyl. He looked at McGinley, then at the footballs. Finally he reached for the telephone.
Within a week the Soviets granted a special visa for McGinley to make the trip as the “honoured guest” of the Soviet people. Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, who had taken a personal interest in directing events at Chernobyl, apparently authorised the trip after speaking directly to the British newspaper magnate Robert Maxwell who wanted the story for his newspapers.
Maxwell, a well-known eccentric and business buccaneer, lived up to his billing by personally telephoning McGinley at his home to inform him: “You are going to Russia!” McGinley was taken aback when the tycoon went on to ask him how long he had been a member of the Communist Party!
The bemused Scot recounting the call later said, “I told him I was a Catholic, and that seemed to satisfy him.”
Within a fortnight McGinley landed at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo international airport to the sort of reception usually given to a visiting world leader.
He was met by various apparatchiks from the Moscow Mayor’s office who whisked him off in some splendour in a convoy of sleek Russian Zil limousines to his hotel, where a dinner had been prepared in his honour.
After a visit to the Bolshoi ballet and the Moscow State Circus he was taken to see Telyatnikov and the rest of the Chernobyl survivors at Hospital Six.
The third floor of the hospital had been set aside for dozens of survivors of the Chernobyl disaster who were cocooned in isolation units. For the most part the victims lay motionless in beds, covered in creams and sterile sheeting that swathed their bodies including their heads.
Only their eyes were uncovered as they stared up at the ceiling. There was little hope for some as they quietly waited for death. For others, those that had handled radioactive equipment, extensive skin grafts were the only answer. And, of course, they all faced the near-certainty of contracting cancer later in life.
Half a million people, mainly women and children who had been evacuated to safe areas in the countryside, faced the same uncertain fate although the State authorities insisted it was just a precautionary measure.
McGinley, who bizarrely was greeted as ‘Dr McGinley’ wherever he went, was bombarded with assurances from various scientists and government officials that the radiation plume had only touched the city briefly when there was a sudden wind change, but there was little residual fallout.
Kiev was now considered safe and the scientists were keen for him to encourage the large numbers of foreign students and tourists who had fled in panic in the immediate aftermath of the disaster to return.
Before he knew it McGinley was escorted to the airport and two hours later touched down at Kiev’s Borispol airport. In keeping with his new-found status as international envoy he was placed in glorious isolation at the front of the plane, while the rest of the passengers were herded to the back.
He was the first off the plane and soon on to a smart little mini-bus (his fellow passengers disembarked from the rear onto an open cart pulled by a tractor) and was whisked through customs controls without the usual formalities.
The first thing he saw on stepping out of the terminal building was a tanker truck spraying water across the forecourt. In the distance another tanker was similarly spraying the approach road.
McGinley walked across mats foaming with detergent through the arrivals hall, and was “swept” by a uniformed official with a radiation monitor before being escorted to his car.
On the approach road to Kiev, his car passed a large crowd of schoolchildren, the girls with gaily-coloured ribbons, and the boys wearing sashes, all lined up in regimental fashion waiting to board a convoy of buses. He was told they were being taken to summer camps far away in the mountains “for their own safety.”
Five miles from Kiev, the car was stopped at a checkpoint while a soldier sprayed the car tyres with detergent. All along the route huge convoys of military vehicles rumbled north toward Chernobyl, laden with sand and cement. It was explained these were for the vast concrete tomb being built around the stricken reactor.
Kiev city, usually a bustling metropolis of some three million people, was spookily quiet. The sidewalks were mostly deserted and what traffic there was seemed to scurry like beetles between buildings as though to avoid the invisible enemy in the air.
The city’s entire transport system had disappeared almost overnight as more than 1,000 buses, trucks and cars were commandeered to help in the huge evacuation of Chernobyl and the surrounding villagers.
Only a few days before, loudspeaker announcements all over the city had ordered the bewilder
ed population to stay indoors and shower every day. No fresh vegetables were to be eaten and milk supplies had to be dumped.
McGinley’s small entourage pulled up at the impressive six-storey Dneiper Hotel, and stepped into an eerily silent world. The cavernous foyer echoed to his footsteps as he made his way to the reception desk where a single clerk stood nervously to attention.
McGinley and an official cum minder from Intourist, the State travel agency, and a couple of journalists were the only guests in the hotel, and that night they dined in splendid isolation in the huge dining room beneath magnificently ornate chandeliers. As they ate, a ceaseless convoy of tankers, spraying water, patrolled the roads and pavements just outside.
McGinley was later joined by Mr Nikolaj Lavrukhin, First Vice Chairman of the Kiev City Soviet. A very important man indeed, but who now seemed tired and dispirited.
Mr Lavrukhin was at pains to assure that all danger from Chernobyl had passed. He produced radiation charts and figures. He said radiation levels had now dropped from a dangerous 0.5 in the early days of the disaster, to a safe 0.06.
He was joined by Mr Victor Dobrotvor, Soviet head of culture and tourism for Ukraine, who arrived with an entourage of three. He frankly admitted that the bottom had dropped out of the tourist trade for Kiev.
In an aggrieved voice he said a total of 61 parties representing more than 1,800 people had cancelled their holidays because of Chernobyl. Mr Dobrotvor was at pains to impress upon McGinley that all danger had now passed and that people shouldn‘t be afraid of coming to his great city. “Even the grass cut out in the fields is being stored and checked for contamination,” he said reassuringly.
McGinley realised by now that his importance and status had somehow been grossly inflated and that the “Chairman of the British Nuclear Test Veterans’ Association” had different connotations in the Soviet Union. But who was he to argue?
He decided to sit back and enjoy the experience. He recalled: “I’m not sure who they thought I was, but they obviously believed I had a lot of clout. I think Robert Maxwell must have given me star billing. It was obvious they were working to a very well rehearsed script with the objective of getting the message across to the outside world that all was well in Kiev.”