Midnight in Chernobyl

by Adam Higginbotham

  Two thousand tons of graphite: For a diagram of the Windscale reactor, see Mahaffey, Atomic Accidents, 163.

  It burned for two days: Rebecca Morelle, “Windscale Fallout Underestimated,” October 6, 2007, BBC News; Arnold, Windscale 1957, 161.

  A board of inquiry: Arnold, Windscale 1957, 78–87.

  Did not fully acknowledge the scale: Mahaffey, Atomic Accidents, 181. The unexpurgated account of the Windscale fire, known as the Penney Report, was declassified and released to the public in January 1988. Mahaffey gives a detailed description of the fire in Atomic Accidents, 159–81.

  They began using gamma rays: Josephson, Red Atom, 4, 142–43, 147, and 248. It is only fair to add that US scientists also pursued food irradiation with some enthusiasm, with the FDA approving bacon irradiated using a cobalt 60 source for human consumption, in 1963 (160). The physicist Edward Teller was also a keen—but frustrated—proponent of “peaceful nuclear explosions,” or PNEs, and the US military developed several mobile reactors of their own.

  A dedicated Communist: Ibid., 113–17.

  Ozymandian dreams: Ibid., 117–18 and 246–49.

  “Big Efim” and “the Ayatollah”: Sklyarov, Chernobyl Was . . . Tomorrow, 10–11. Also see recollections about Slavsky collated by V. Y. Bushmelev, “For Efim Pavlovich Slavsky’s 115th Birthday” [К 115-летию Ефима Павловича Славского], Interregional Non-Governmental Movement of Nuclear Power and Industry Veterans, October 26, 2013, www.veteranrosatom.ru/articles/articles_276.html.

  Although as young men: Angelina Guskova, interview by Vladimir Gubarev, “On the Edge of the Atomic Sword” [На лезвии атомного меча], Nauka i zhizn, no. 4, 2007; Igor Osipchuk, “The legendary academician Aleksandrov fought with the White Guard in his youth” [Легендарный академик Александров в юности был белогвардейцем], February 4, 2014, Fakty i kommentarii, http://fakty.ua/176084-legendarnyj-prezident-sovetskoj-akademii-nauk-v-yunosti-byl-belogvardejcem.

  A massive nuclear empire: Schmid, Producing Power, 53; “The Industry’s Evolution: Introduction” [Эволюция отрасли: Введение], Rosatom, www.biblioatom.ru/evolution/vvedeniye.

  “post office boxes”: Fedor Popov, Arzamas–16: Seven Years with Andrei Sakharov [Арзамас-16: семь лет с Андреем Сахаровым] (Moscow: Institut, 1998), 52; Schmid, Producing Power, 93.

  Led by Slavsky: Schmid, Producing Power, 50 and 234n55.

  The clandestine impulse persisted: Although most nuclear research would eventually be conducted by scientists answering to the seemingly transparent State Committee for the Utilization of Atomic Energy, this was also simply a public front for Sredmash. Nikolai Steinberg recalls that, long before the fall of the USSR, this false distinction between Sredmash and the State Committee was well known to foreign specialists—“as they say, ‘everything is confidential, but nothing is secret.’ ” Georgi Kopchinsky and Nikolai Steinberg, Chernobyl: On the Past, Present and Future [Чернобыль: О прошлом, настоящем и будущем] (Kiev: Osnova, 2011), 123. Later, the Soviet government established a regulatory body—the State Committee on Safety in the Atomic Power Industry, which sent representatives to oversee operating conditions at every nuclear power plant in the Union. But the committee never published reports and operated under conditions of strict secrecy. Zhores Medvedev, Legacy of Chernobyl, 263–64; Schmid, Producing Power, 50–52, 60, and 235n58.

  As one of the twelve founding members: David Fischer, History of the Atomic Energy Agency: The First Forty Years (Vienna: IAEA, 1997), 40 and 42–43.

  The safest nuclear industry in the world: In contrast to the representatives of the apparently more troubled industries in the United States, Britain, and France, the Soviet delegation never reported a single incident at a reactor or reprocessing plant (Medvedev, Legacy of Chernobyl, 264–65).

  At 4:20 p.m on Sunday, September 29, 1957: Kate Brown, Plutopia: Nuclear Families, Atomic Cities, and the Great Soviet and American Plutonium Disasters (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 232.

  An underground waste storage tank: G. Sh. Batorshin and Y. G. Mokrov, “Experience in Eliminating the Consequences of the 1957 Accident at the Mayak Production Association,” International Experts’ Meeting on Decommissioning and Remediation After a Nuclear Accident, IAEA, Vienna, Austria, January 28 to February 1, 2013.

  Light rain and a thick, black snow: Brown, Plutopia, 239.

  It took a year to clean up: Ibid., 232–36.

  In the remote villages: V. S. Tolstikov and V. N. Kuznetsov, “The 1957 Radiation Accident in Southern Urals: Truth and Fiction” [Южно-уральская радиационная авария 1957 года: Правда и домыслы], Vremya 32, no. 8 (August 2017): 13; Brown, Plutopia, 239–44.

  Up to a half million people: Some scientists estimate that 475,000 people could have been exposed (Mahaffey, Atomic Accidents, 284), but others, in particular official Russian sources, cite much lower numbers of about 45,500 people. See Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations, “The Aftermath of the Man-Made Radiation Exposure and the Challenge of Rehabilitating the Ural Region” [Последствия техногенного радиационного воздействия и проблемы реабилитации Уральского региона], Moscow, 2002, http://chernobyl-mchs.ru/upload/program_rus/program_rus_1993-2010/Posledstviy_Ural.pdf.

  Shot down by a Soviet SA-2: Oleg A. Bukharin, “The Cold War Atomic Intelligence Game, 1945–70,” Studies in Intelligence 48, no. 2 (2004): 4.

  3. FRIDAY, APRIL 25, 5:00 P.M., PRIPYAT

  Almost everyone was looking forward to the long weekend: Kovtutsky, author interview, 2016.

  “Let the atom be a worker, not a soldier!”: Maria Protsenko, author interview, Kiev, September 2015. A photograph of the slogan can be seen at “Pripyat Before the Accident: Part IX,” Chernobyl and Pripyat electronic archive, March 25, 2011, http://pripyat-city.ru/uploads/posts/2011-04/1303647106_50008255-pr-c.jpg.

  Yuvchenko had worked at the station for only three years: Alexander Yuvchenko, author interview, 2006.

  It was only over the objections of his trainer: Alexander’s younger brother Vladimir chose rowing and represented the USSR in the 1988 Olympics in Seoul. Natalia Donets et al., 25 Years of the National Olympic and Sports Committee of the Republic of Moldova [25 de ani ai Comitetului National Olimpic si Sportiv din Republica Moldova] (Chisinau: Elan Poligraph, 2016), 16.

  Something futuristic and spectacular: Natalia Yuvchenko, author interview, Moscow, October 2015.

  In spite of the long hours he put in at work: Natalia Yuvchenko, email correspondence with author, December 2015; Maria Protsenko, author interview, April 2016.

  Borrowed a neighbor’s small motorboat: Natalia Yuvchenko, author interview, 2015.

  Like all newly qualified Soviet specialists: Alexander Yuvchenko, author interview, 2006.

  When their son was born: Natalia Yuvchenko, author interview, 2015; author visit to the Yuvchenkos’ flat in Pripyat, April 27, 2016.

  Still, with no family nearby to provide help: Read, Ablaze, 61; Natalia Yuvchenko, author interview, 2015.

  Rich Man, Poor Man: Natalia Yuvchenko, email correspondence with author, 2015.

  He seemed restless: Natalia Yuvchenko, author interview, 2015.

  She left the TV: Read, Ablaze, 61.

  A few hundred meters away: Alexander (Sasha) Korol, author interview, Kiev, September 2015.

  Toptunov was born within sight: Vera Toptunova, author interview, Kiev, September 2015.

  Toptunov’s father liked to boast: Korol, author interview, 2015.

  When Toptunov was thirteen: Toptunova, author interview, 2015.

  Established with the patronage of Kurchatov: Originally established as the Moscow Mechanical Institute of Munitions in 1942, the university shifted its focus almost exclusively to nuclear physics after the war, with Kurchatov’s encourageme
nt and support. “History,” National Research Nuclear University MEPhI, https://mephi.ru/about/index2.php.

  The examination was notoriously difficult: Andrei Glukhov, author interview, Chernobyl nuclear power plant, February 2016.

  The course work was tough: Alexey Breus, author interview, Kiev, July 2015.

  Long banished from television: Kristin Roth-Ey, Moscow Prime Time: How the Soviet Union Built the Media Empire That Lost the Cultural Cold War (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011), 258–59.

  Shy-looking, with glasses and a lingering hint of puppy fat: Author interviews, 2015: Toptunova, Breus, and Glukhov.

  At MEPhI, Toptunov took up: Korol, author interview, 2015.

  Against the advice of his tutors: Breus, author interview, 2015.

  One night after class: Korol, author interview, 2015.

  After four years of study: Korol, interviews by the author (2015) and Taras Shumeyko (April 2018, Kiev).

  Like all other new engineers: Breus, author interview, 2015.

  During the summer and autumn of 1983: Ibid.; Korol, author interview, 2015. Date of first criticality is provided in Sich, “The Chornobyl Accident Revisited,” 83.

  Toptunov organized a gym: Korol, author interview, 2015; Toptunova, author interview, 2015; R. Veklicheva, “A Soviet way of life. The test” [Образ жизни—Советский. Испытание], Vperiod (official newspaper of Obninsk Communist Party Committee), June 17, 1986, Vera Toptunova’s personal archive.

  He had a girlfriend: Korol, author interview, 2015; Josephson, Red Atom, 6–7. Radionuclides accumulated in the water during its passage through the reactors were intended to become trapped in sediment that fell to the bottom of the cooling pond, filtering them out before the water reached the Pripyat River (Zhores Medvedev, Legacy of Chernobyl, 92). Because reactor outfall maintained the pond at a year-round temperature of 24 degrees centigrade, in 1978 local Soviet authorities decided to develop the radioactive lake for commercial fish farming. Subsequent tests established that fish caught there contained potentially dangerous levels of strontium 90, and three years later their sale was forbidden. Local fishermen continued regardless. Danilyuk, ed., Z arkhiviv, document no. 6: “Report of the UkSSR KGBM on Kiev and Kiev region to the UkSSR KGB concerning violations of the radiation safety requirements while studying the feasibility to use the Chernobyl NPS cooling pond for the purposes of industrial fishery,” March 12, 1981.

  The operators spoke their own coded language: Sergei Yankovsky, author interview, Kiev, February 2016.

  There were thick stacks of manuals: The operators’ manual is described by Anatoly Kryat (chief of the nuclear physics laboratory at the plant), in court testimony reproduced by Karpan, From Chernobyl to Fukushima, 190.

  After one of these safety exams: Korol, author interview, 2015.

  Only after all of this study: Anatoly Kryat, author interview, Kiev, February 2016.

  “Let’s go together”: Korol, author interview, 2015.

  A warm, sultry night: Svetlana Kirichenko (chief economist of the Pripyat ispolkom), author interview, April 24, 2016; recollections of Pripyat residents quoted in Vasily Voznyak and Stanislav Troitsky, Chernobyl: It Was Like This—The View from the Inside [Чернобыль: Так это было—взгляд изнутри] (Moscow: Libris, 1993).

  On the bus: Boris Stolyarchuk, author interview, Kiev, July 2015; Iurii Shcherbak, “Chernobyl: A Documentary Tale” [Чернобыль: Документальная повесть], Yunost, nos. 6–7 (1987), translated by JPRS Political Affairs as “Fictionalized Report on First Anniversary of Chernobyl Accident,” Report no. JPRS-UPA-87-029, September 15, 1987 (hereafter, “Report on First Anniversary of Chernobyl Accident”), pt. 1, 24.

  Taking the polished marble stairs: Read, Ablaze, 61; author visit to the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, February 10, 2016. The route and routine for entering the building had remained largely unchanged since 1986.

  The turbine hall housed: Sich diagrams a cross-section of the turbine hall in “The Chornobyl Accident Revisited,” 192.

  The deaerator corridor: Author visit to the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, 2016; Steinberg, personal communication with author, August 6, 2018; Sich, “The Chornobyl Accident Revisited,” 191. The deaerator corridor became more widely known after the accident as the “gold” corridor.

  A little more than five hundred meters away: Anatoly Zakharov, author interviews, February 2006 and February 2016; Piotr Khmel, author interview, July 2015; author visit to Fire Station Number Two, Pripyat, April 25, 2016; Leonid Shavrey, testimony in Sergei Kiselyov, “Inside the Beast,” trans. Viktoria Tripolskaya-Mitlyng, Bulletin of Atomic Scientists 52, no. 3 (1996): 47.

  They had already been called: Kiev Region Fire Department Dispatch Log for April 25–26, 1986 (Chernobyl Museum archive, Kiev), 109–11.

  There was never much action: Alexander Petrovsky, author interview, Bohdany, Ukraine, November 2016; Zakharov, author interview, 2016.

  Behind the doors: Piotr Khmel, author interview, 2016.

  At the back of the building: Zakharov, author interview, 2016.

  The third watch lacked discipline: Piotr Khmel, author interview, 2015; Leonid P. Telyatnikov, account, in Iurii Shcherbak, Chernobyl [Чернобыль], trans. Ian Press (London: Macmillan, 1989), 26–27; Shcherbak, trans. JPRS, “Report on First Anniversary of Chernobyl Accident,” 46–66.

  “Major Telyatnikov will get back”: Piotr Khmel, author interview, 2015.

  “people’s champagne”: Graham Harding, “Sovetskoe Shampanskoye—Stalin’s ‘Plebeian Luxury,’ ” Wine As Was, August 26, 2014.

  At around eleven: Khmel, author interview, 2015.

  Over at the power station: Alexander Yuvchenko, author interview, 2006.

  4. SECRETS OF THE PEACEFUL ATOM

  On September 29, 1966: International Atomic Energy Agency, International Nuclear Safety Advisory Group, “The Chernobyl Accident: Updating of INSAG–1,” Safety series no. 75–INSAG–7, 1992 (hereafter INSAG–7), 32; Schmid, Producing Power, 111.

  A direct descendant of the old Atom Mirny-1: For a discussion of how economies of scale influenced this choice, see Marples, Chernobyl and Nuclear Power in the USSR, 111.

  Twelve meters across: International Atomic Energy Agency, INSAG–7, 40; the weight of graphite in the core is provided in Zhores Medvedev, Legacy of Chernobyl, 5.

  These channels contained: Zhores Medvedev, Legacy of Chernobyl, 236; Alexander Sich, telephone interview, May 2018.

  The power of the reactor: Sich, “The Chornobyl Accident Revisited,” 185.

  To help protect the plant: Reactor pit dimensions (21.6 m × 21.6 m × 25.5 m) are given in Sich, “The Chornobyl Accident Revisited,” 429. See also 179 for a cross-sectional view of the reactor vault. Also see USSR State Committee on the Utilization of Atomic Energy, “The Accident at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant and Its Consequences,” information compiled for the August 1986 IAEA Experts’ Meeting in Vienna (hereafter “USSR State Committee Report on Chernobyl”), “Part 2: Annex 2,” 7 and 9. Sich (244) describes serpentinite as a hydrous magnesium silicate.

  A biological shield: Alexander Sich provides a detailed breakdown of the reactor shaft construction materials, showing that the combined mass of Structure E was at least two thousand tonnes (“Chornobyl Accident Revisited,” 427). The same number is noted by the International Atomic Energy Agency in its report on Chernobyl (INSAG–7, 9). These calculations revise the lower estimate of a thousand tonnes cited in 1987 by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission in Report on the Accident at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station (NUREG-1250), 2–12.

  Pierced by ducts: USSR State Committee Report on Chernobyl, Part 2 Annex 2, 7, and 9; Sich, “Chornobyl Accident Revisited,” 196.

  Known by the plant staff as the pyatachok: Grigori Medvedev, The Truth About Chernobyl, 73–74.

  The RBMK was a triumph: Alexander Sich notes that the typical core of a 1,300-megawatt PWR reactor used in the West
was 3.4 meters in diameter and 4.3 meters high (“Chornobyl Accident Revisited,” 158). See also Josephson, Red Atom, 299t6.

  Soviet scientists proclaimed it: Sich, “Chornobyl Accident Revisited,” 156–57; Schmid, Producing Power, 115 and 123.

  Personally taken credit for its design: Schmid, Producing Power, 290n124.

  In contrast to its principal Soviet competitor: Ibid., 123; Josephson, Red Atom, 36.

  Aleksandrov also saved money: Schmid, Producing Power, 112.

  A less costly solution: Zhores Medvedev, Legacy of Chernobyl, 236.

  A break in the pressure tubes: Nikolai Steinberg, author interview, September 2015.

  Worse accidents were theoretically possible: International Atomic Energy Agency, INSAG–7, 9.

  Yet the designers saw no need: Charles K. Dodd, Industrial Decision-Making and High-Risk Technology: Siting Nuclear Power Facilities in the USSR (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1994), 83–84.

  The Ministry of Medium Machine Building ordered: Schmid, Producing Power, 110.

  One scientist from the Kurchatov: The physicist was Vladimir Volkov (ibid., 145).

  Another recognized that the hazards: This expert was Ivan Zhezherun, also of the Kurchatov Institute (Zhores Medvedev, Legacy of Chernobyl, 258–59).

  But by then, the government: Schmid, Producing Power, 110 and 124; International Atomic Energy Agency, INSAG–7, 37.

  It was not until 1968: Schmid, Producing Power, 110–11.

  So, to save time: International Atomic Energy Agency, INSAG–7, 37; Anatoly Dyatlov, Chernobyl: How It Was [Чернобыль: Как это было] (Moscow: Nauchtekhizdat, 2003), online at http://pripyat-city.ru/books/25-chernobyl-kak-yeto-bylo.html, 27.

  Construction began: Dodd, Industrial Decision-Making and High-Risk Technology, app. A.

  The republic’s new 2,000-megawatt atomic energy station: At this point, Sredmash officials had yet to decide which type of reactor they would build at this second site. They considered three options: a gas-cooled graphite model known as the RK-1000, the VVER, and the RBMK. At first, they dismissed the RBMK as technically and economically the worst of them all. They chose the more advanced, and safer, gas-cooled RK-1000 instead. But by mid-1969, Moscow’s ambitious nuclear construction targets were already slipping out of reach, and time was precious. Sredmash recognized that—whatever its limitations—the graphite-water colossus could be manufactured more quickly than the more sophisticated gas-cooled model. It reversed its decision, and went with the RBMK after all. Six months later, at the dawn of a new decade, Viktor Brukhanov was summoned to the headquarters of the Ministry of Energy and Electrification in Moscow and given instructions to build the first two RBMK-1000 reactors of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant (International Atomic Energy Agency, INSAG–7, 32–33; Schmid, Producing Power, 120–25).