‘Ah,’ said the old man in a quavering voice. ‘Then it must be serious. Yes, it must be very serious indeed.’
V
1
At 6.00 a.m. that Saturday, the Soviet prime minister, Nikolai Ryzhkov, was called at home by the minister of energy, Mayorets, and told about the accident at Chernobyl. There had been a fire; no one knew what had caused it; experts from the ministry were on their way; everything was under control.
To the good-looking and relatively youthful prime minister, with his thoroughly decent manner but slightly lugubrious expression, an accident in a nuclear power station was now added to a long list of other preoccupations: the war in Afghanistan, the campaign against alcoholism starting on 1 May, the American ‘star wars’ programme and the Herculean tasks imposed by glasnost and perestroika. Ryzhkov was relatively new to political power – like Gorbachev, he had only been brought onto the Central Committee by Andropov five years before – and the ladder he had climbed was not that of the party apparatus but that of industrial management and economic planning. At one time a miner, later an engineer, he had run the gigantic Uralmash military-industrial conglomerate in the 1970s and was as close to an apolitical technocrat as it was possible to be in the ideologically oriented Soviet system.
When he got to his office at nine – it would have been earlier on a weekday – Ryzhkov heard again from Mayorets. It now looked as if the accident was more serious than at first supposed. The fire was not just in the turbine hall, but had followed an explosion in the reactor itself. Although an experienced engineer, Ryzhkov knew nothing about atomic physics, and so ordered Mayorets to send out experts while he would form a commission of inquiry. The obvious man to head it was Ryzhkov’s dynamic deputy, Boris Scherbina, the minister responsible for fuel and power. Learning that he was in Orenburg on the Ural River, Ryzhkov reached him by telephone and told him of his appointment. He was to wind up his business in Orenburg as quickly as possible and go to Chernobyl. At 11.00 a.m. Ryzhkov signed the decree establishing the government commission.
The son of a railway worker from the Donetsk region of the Ukraine, Boris Yevdokimovich Scherbina had risen through the party apparatus in Kharkov to become first secretary of the industrial region of Tyumen, and from 1973 to 1984 was the minister of petroleum and gas industry enterprises. In this capacity he had been responsible for building a 4,500-kilometre pipeline to bring natural gas from western Siberia to be sold for hard currency in the West. Bedevilled by the difficulties endemic to any enterprise of this size, he also had to deal with a U.S. government ban on the sale of any American components for the pumping stations, whether manufactured in the United States or Western Europe; furthermore, the story was put out in West Germany that he was using convict labour from the gulags.
A small, wiry man, Scherbina had been rewarded for his achievements with four Orders of Lenin, a Hero of Socialist Labour, an Order of the October Revolution and promotion in 1984 to deputy prime minister, with responsibility for energy throughout the Soviet Union.
By noon that Saturday, having finished his business in Orenburg, Scherbina flew back to Moscow and went home to change his clothes and have lunch. At 4.00 p.m. he was back at Vnukovo airport, and with the other members of the commission, who had been waiting for a couple of hours, took off for Kiev. Knowing little about atomic physics, Scherbina invited Valeri Legasov to sit next to him on the plane, and asked him what might have happened. Legasov was unsure. He told Scherbina about the accident at Three Mile Island, but explained that a similar mishap was unlikely because the reactor at Chernobyl was of a different design.
When they landed at Kiev’s Juliana airport the commission was given a reception appropriate to Scherbina’s rank: a delegation of local party leaders was waiting on the tarmac in front of a long line of huge black Volgas and Zils. The Ukrainian Communists all looked anxious: because Chernobyl was an All-Union enterprise, they knew even less about what had happened than Scherbina and Legasov. They sped north from Juliana with a motorcycle escort provided by the militia, through the towns of Dymer, Ivankov and Chernobyl itself to the party building in Pripyat, which they reached at 8.00 p.m.
An operational headquarters had been set up in the office of the town party secretary, Gamanyuk. Two hours before, the minister, Mayorets, had chaired a meeting at which he had not only refused to countenance the shutdown of the first two reactors but had ordered the wretched Brukhanov to draw up a schedule for the recommissioning of the fourth unit by the end of the year so that Mayorets could placate Scherbina.
Scherbina was small, but like Napoleon he made up for his insignificant stature with a tough, determined manner, thin lips fixed in a hard expression and eyes that mesmerized his subordinates like mice before a snake. His manner terrified Brukhanov and offended the valiant General Ivanov, who felt he was being treated like a fool.
Scherbina asked for reports from the assembled experts and officials and listened with menacing silence to Mayorets, the minister of energy; Marin, responsible for atomic power in the secretariat of the Central Committee; Yevgeny Vorobyov, a deputy minister of health; Vasili Kizima, the head of construction at Chernobyl nuclear power station; Gennady Shasharin, Mayorets’ deputy; and Boris Prushinsky, the chief engineer of the State Committee of Atomic Energy, who with Nikolai Poloshkin from NIKYET had flown over the damaged reactor at a height of eight hundred feet in a helicopter belonging to the civil defence.
They told him what they had seen. The explosion had destroyed the reactor and ignited the graphite in its core. The upper biological shield, weighing one thousand tons, had been blown to one side, leaving the inside of the reactor open to the sky. It was red-hot from the graphite fire. The pumps and piping of both the main circuit and the emergency supply had been destroyed; so too were the separator drums and auxiliary tanks. It was clear that if any water was actually getting to the burning graphite, it was having no effect; if anything, it was making matters worse by creating radioactive steam.
Next came a report from the commander of the chemical troops, Colonel General Pikalov. A cossack from the Kuban, tall and vigorous with strong features, a florid complexion, thick, bushy eyebrows and a deep voice, he talked with the assurance of someone on his home ground.
Pikalov was the son of a cavalry officer and had served in the army since the age of sixteen when his class volunteered as snipers as the Germans approached their school in Rostov-on-Don. After Rostov, he had fought in Moscow, Voronezh, Stalingrad, Minsk, Berlin and Prague. He had been wounded three times (marrying the nurse who had tended him on the last occasion), and still had twenty fragments of shrapnel buried in his head. In 1945, he had joined the newly formed Military Academy of Chemical Warfare. Thirty years later, after a spell on the general staff, he had been put in command of the chemical warfare division of the Soviet Armed Forces. Earlier that Saturday, he had been attending the conference called by the minister of defence in Lvov. He had flown directly from there to Chernobyl in an Mi-8 helicopter, and had at once circled the reactor to assess the damage. Appalled by what he had seen, he had radioed Marshal Akhromeev in Moscow to alert units in Ovruc and to send specialized equipment from Kiev.
Pikalov now gave Boris Scherbina a preliminary assessment. As a result of the explosion in the fourth reactor there had developed two exceedingly dangerous sources of radioactive contamination. The first was the vapour rising from the reactor and forming a cloud that was drifting north-northwest; at midday, they had already measured a level of thirty-nine roentgens an hour fifty kilometres from the station. It was extremely fortunate that this highly radioactive vapour had been carried away from Pripyat by the prevailing winds, but Comrade Scherbina should bear in mind that the wind could change.
The second source of radiation, Pikalov explained, was the debris scattered by the explosion around the reactor. This was largely graphite, but there were also fragments of zirconium from the fuel-assembly casing, and even deposits of the uranium fuel itself. This second source made it ext
remely hazardous to approach the reactor for anything other than a very short period of time.
Dr Abagyan confirmed what Pikalov had said. This robust Armenian, director of VNIIAES, the All-Union Research Institute for Nuclear Power Plant Operation, had arrived that afternoon with dosimeters capable of measuring any level of radiation. He described how he and his assistants had at once tried to get through to the fourth unit. They had found the corridors flooded with highly radioactive water and therefore had climbed up to a window in the third unit that looked out over the damaged reactor. It was apparent from what they saw that the explosion had taken place in the core itself, and that a fire still raged in what remained of the graphite stacks. They had looked out for less than a minute, and in that short space of time had measured a dose of fifteen rems.
Scherbina remained calm. From what he had been told by these and other experts, it was apparent that they faced an accident of a catastrophic and unprecedented kind. A number of important decisions had to be made at once. The simplest was made first: the first two units, as well as the third, were to be closed down. The second question involved the evacuation of Pripyat. Scherbina turned to General Berdov, the deputy minister of the interior of the Ukraine and commander of the militia. He had been at Chernobyl since 5.00 a.m. and now reported that contingency plans had been drawn up to evacuate the town. Six hundred Icarus buses had been requisitioned from the city of Kiev, and a further 250 buses were available, as well as 300 cars and two trains. Already a number of families had left in their own cars, whether fleeing from the accident or for the weekend it was hard to tell. Roadblocks were now in place to prevent cars from approaching Pripyat. From the point of view of the civil defence, the greatest danger was mass panic, leading to a disorganized exodus through possibly contaminated territory. For that reason, Berdov had ordered his men not to wear masks or respirators in the town; there were not enough for the whole population, and to distribute some to the few would cause panic among the many.
Next, General Ivanov reported on radiation in the town. Ten different samples showed levels of between one and fifty milliroentgens per hour. However, the question of evacuation was legally the responsibility of the Ministry of Health. Scherbina turned to its representative, who took the view that evacuation was unnecessary. The established norms were as follows: at seventy-five rems, evacuation was mandatory; at twenty-five rems it was unnecessary; between twenty-five and seventy-five, it was a matter of judgment by the local authorities. Clearly, if present levels remained constant, the population was in no danger of receiving even the minimum permitted dose of twenty-five rems. The principal danger came from the short-lived radioactive isotopes of iodine 131, which would lodge in the thyroid gland; this was particularly hazardous for children. Therefore stable iodine should be distributed to saturate their thyroid glands and allow the radioactive iodine to pass through the body.
The physicists disagreed. They argued that it would be best to play safe. No one knew what was going on in the reactor. There could possibly be a power surge or a meltdown, and the direction of the wind could change. To have to evacuate the people of Pripyat at a later date under a cloud of highly radioactive aerosols would subject them to greater risk.
But other factors had to be taken into consideration. Could the evacuation of fifty thousand people be concealed from the rest of the population? It would not be reported by the media, of course, but rumours would quickly reach Kiev. Would these cause panic and a mass exodus of three million people from the city? And how would this look to the outside world? What effect would it have on the prestige and standing of the Soviet Union? Certainly there might be some casualties if they stayed, but they would be trivial compared to those of the Great Patriotic War.
For once the decisive Scherbina did not make up his mind. He would have to get further advice. General Berdov was to deploy the buses for an immediate evacuation; a final decision would be made in the morning. In the meantime the commission was to be divided into different teams to undertake specific tasks. Dr Abagyan was to collate data on the levels of radiation – to discover, above all, whether there was evidence that the reactor was still active. Academician Legasov was to suggest methods of limiting the effects of the accident. All were to report back when the commission reconvened at 7.00 a.m the next day.
2
Boris Scherbina now decided to take a look at the reactor for himself. With Valeri Legasov and Mayorets’ deputy, Shasharin, he took off in a helicopter from the square in front of the offices of the Central Committee and flew towards the red glow that lit up the night sky.
They were horrified by what they saw. In contrast to the clean, white exterior of an undamaged nuclear facility, the fourth reactor now looked more like an oil refinery or a steel works. With binoculars they looked down on the burning graphite, the red-hot biological shield, and the sinister blue glow in the core. It was terrible, but it was also awesome, and Legasov realized for the first time that they were facing a catastrophe of a historic kind, like the eruption of Vesuvius that had destroyed Pompeii, or the earthquake and fire in San Francisco.
The helicopter brought them down on the main square in Pripyat, and they went to the office of the party secretary to discuss what was to be done. While the others had been above the reactor, General Pikalov had made a survey of his own in an EMR2, a tracked reconnaissance vehicle based on the T54 tank for which Pikalov himself had drawn up the specifications. It was hermetically sealed and fitted with filters that removed radionuclides from the outside air. External dosimeters measured radiation, and lead panels in the armour protected those inside from gamma radiation. Three of these vehicles had been sent from Kiev. Pikalov had taken the first, and with a junior officer as his driver had set off from party headquarters in Pripyat, crashed through the wire fence that surrounded the power station and driven up to the wall of the damaged reactor. He was able to measure the level of radiation, and also the rate of emission of short-lived isotopes to help determine whether the reactor still remained active or not. This reconnaissance took about thirty minutes, and despite the protection of the armour gave the general and his driver a dose of thirteen rems.
With the data Pikalov had collected, together with measurements taken by Legasov and Abagyan, it was now clear that fission had ceased, but the burning graphite was still spewing millions of curies of radioactive particles into the sky. Something had to be done to put it out, and now Shasharin and Poloshkin, Marin and Mayorets, Ivanov and Pikalov, as well as Scherbina himself put forward a number of ideas – some wild and fanciful, like lifting huge tanks of water by helicopter and dropping them into the inferno, or building concrete walls around the reactor so that the fire fighters could approach it and spray it with water and foam. All were determined to take decisive, heroic action, but no one had the slightest idea what it should be.
As he listened, Legasov was dismayed by the ignorance of the officials and engineers. The operators had behaved well, remaining at their posts and obeying any orders they had been given, but those who had the scientific and technical knowledge to understand what had happened were paralysed with indecision, and those who had the authority and the habit of command knew nothing about atomic physics. Only one man combined both qualities and that was Legasov. He now described the situation to Scherbina as simply as he could. Fission had ceased in the reactor, but the graphite in the core was burning, sending millions of curies of radionuclides into the air. The average rate of combustion of graphite was about one ton per hour, and unit 4 had contained twenty-five hundred tons. Some of this had been thrown out by the explosion, but if as much as half remained it would mean that the fire would go on burning for nearly two months. It was therefore unacceptable to wait for the fire to burn itself out; clearly it must be extinguished.
There was a further and possibly more serious danger. If the temperature in the core increased, there was a danger that the uranium fuel itself would melt, with unforeseeable consequences. It was therefore imperative that
the temperature in the core be reduced, but this could hardly be done with water; indeed, at temperatures over 2,500°C water itself breaks up into the explosive chemical components of hydrogen and oxygen. The only method to stop the emission of radionuclides and put out the fire was to smother the burning reactor with sand. This would have to be dropped into the crater by helicopters, and to the loads of sand should be added boron, dolomite and lead. The lead would cool the core; it boiled at 1,744°C and would absorb some of the heat. At these high temperatures the dolomite would break down into magnesium, calcium and carbon dioxide, which would also absorb the heat and generate an inert gas to smother the fire. Finally, the boron would absorb the neutrons and inhibit any further chain reactions.
Now at last Scherbina could show what he was made of; his dynamism could be released. He summoned the local air force commander, then turned to the assembled experts. How much sand would be required? There was a hurried discussion. The deputy minister of energy, Shasharin, estimated that the crater was four metres deep and twenty metres wide; therefore it would require three or four thousand tons of sand to achieve their objective. Was sand available? There were large deposits on the banks of the Pripyat River. And boron, dolomite and lead? Brukhanov and Kizima were told to make an inventory of what was available; otherwise supplies must be commandeered from further afield.
The young air force commander, Major General Antoshkin, now reported to Scherbina, having arrived in Pripyat an hour before, at 1.00 a.m. on the 27th. Scherbina described his mission: he was to seal the crater of the reactor with sand. ‘Everything now depends on you and your pilots, Comrade General. Only you can save the day.’
‘And when should the operation commence, Comrade Minister?’ asked Antoshkin.
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