valery legasov tapes transcript

But yet, he, how should I tell you, well, didnt want to die for this philosophy. Minatomenergo led the work on the preparations to launch the 1st and 2nd blocks and had already started to gradually make their way into the 3rd block to assess its condition. Or manually, using the special AZ-5 button to reset the emergency rods. After I arrived at the institute, they met me, washed me, cleaned me as much as it was possible. [5] Malicious rumors began to be circulated such as the accusation of being an alcoholic, over-ambitious or to blame for the Chernobyl disaster. Whenever we came to some reasonable scientific decisions, the leadership of the Government Commission was able to, with the help of the Operative Group or one of its members, instantly obtain all the necessary materials that we needed in order to implement it in a fantastically short time, literally within days, and sometimes hours. Legasov: He was not there. My first candidate thesis was proposed to me, to tackle the problem of such a gas phase reactor that would contain gaseous uranium hexachloride as fuel and such problems, namely the problem of interaction at high temperatures of uranium hexachloride with construction materials. In 2016, a bust and a commemorative plaque were installed on the wall of Valery Legasov's home in Tula.[39]. And not that they had any experience [to draw from]. 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. It was not in the design, but it was there and not shown in any of the drawings. That is why they came to personally sort these matters out at the location. me that the team has been determined in advance by the appropriate orders, which, depending on the type of accident, should immediately meet, or remain on, the seats, direct personnel actions at the, team was assembled at night and flew to the scene about three to four hours, reactor, and it was the reactor of the 4th unit of the Chernobyl nuclear power, plant, is in general controlled. And yet, the gate valve that needed to be opened to determine if there was water inside the bubblers, was opened by one of the station workers in very difficult conditions. [They made him retire.]. Perhaps that was a wrong decision, because some of those cars were contaminated, and the dosimetric posts had not yet been organized to control the contamination levels on such vehicles . [2][3][4] He attended secondary school in Kursk. However, in whispers, all the operators, all the engineers and experts were saying that this reactor is very difficult to control. These sensors were placed in various spots. If there is a probability of receiving a dose of 75 rem or more, then the local authorities are required to carry out an evacuation. Those needed to maintain the city and service the station remained. 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. And perhaps they should bear criminal responsibility for it. And everything around is clean. Thats why the most precise information about the state of the reactor was gathered from the ratio of short-lived and long-lived isotopes of iodine-134 and -131. He arrived. I would very much like to ask to make such a statement that, as of today, we do not have safe nuclear energy, or a concept of safe nuclear energy, or even a concept of a safe nuclear reactor that is completely ready[7], He had a lengthy stay in hospital during the fall of 1987, including experiencing acute appendicitis,[31] during which he attempted suicide. They left me. This is very important. Get started for FREE Continue. Legasov: Yes. It was considered bad because of economic reasons. In other words, this issue was constantly under his control, as were all the other issues related to the Chernobyl accident. But as soon as the first such reactor, the first one they plugged in near Leningrad, a 100 kilometres from Leningrad, the first such RBMK reactor As soon as it began to run, right away it was discovered that the reactor was bad, that it was difficult to control, that its neutron fields started to float. Yes? However, the technological support for this complex cycle is outdated. It needs mentioning that when the work became organized like this, when the effort was distributed across various institutions and supervisors, then, of course, there was much more order and clarity than in the first days when all the emergency problems were solved but not all work had gone smoothly. The public was protesting against the continued construction of the 5th and 6th blocks and their entering into service, because they felt that it was too much power, 6 gigawatts, on a single site, especially in abnormal radiation conditions. They did not know what to do; and if they received direct instructions, they did not demonstrate any influence, management skills or ability to remedy the situation. These questions were discussed with the director. "[11] Ustynyuk emphasized the role of the harassment of Legasov by other scientific leaders in their resistance to organizational reform. The first was about the population. [7], Reactor 4 of Chernobyl nuclear plant exploded on 26 April 1986 at 1:23:45 a.m, releasing a massive amount of radiation and contaminating a large area. Moreover, this is being done on different devices at different times. So we had to send out a lot of people to assess the situation. But here, suddenly, there was a crimson glow in half the sky and white smoke streaming out of the reactor. 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. This by no means was an easy operation. I have to start the part where I create my memoir. While some of the dissatisfied masses sign petitions to re-shoot the latest season of Game of Thrones, others are enthusiastically responding to the new mini-series Chornobyl . During the first days of the Chernobyl tragedy, the flaws in our information services were very evident. This is how five out of ten projects became a failure. At first, he opposed it greatly, he foughtand I can prove this documentarilybut then he gave up. There werent any radio-controlled aircraft equipped with dosimetric devices. Work, so to say, is progressing on the station, then abruptly stops because one or the other equipment is not there. Legasov: Well, the decision has already been made, an emotional one, so to say. The maximum rate of combustion under the temperatures we established (the temperature of graphite combustion) is around a ton per hour. Radioactive emissions were still going on but, of course, getting lesser and lesser until about the 20th of May. It can be taken from my older works that we mostly use heat, radiation, today; but actually, it is possible to produce synthetic materials, to alloy, modify, remove impurities in nuclear sources more simply and more economically than is done today in, for example, chemical or metallurgical industry. But not everyone is in a hurry. Starting on the second day we started receiving suggestions from abroad about various chemical mixtures that could be used on the burning graphite. This forced us to use manned helicopters, which in turn caused additional radiation exposure for the people and made these flights dangerous because the helicopters could collide with some structure and lead to the destruction of, say, a neighbouring block. According to my estimates, 200 tons of lead had been ordered but I immediately told Boris Eudokimovich that 200 tons wont solve any problems. A lot of materials were used, our own Soviet were offered. But they went in the direction of increasing the coastdown time of the turbine, when, at this time, there already were diesel generators that could output at the required electrotechnical levels two to three times quicker than those installed at the Chernobyl station. Rather, A.P.Alexandrov called Kokoshin, the Deputy Director of the Institute for USA and Canada (he had a doctorate, a very interesting young man), and asked him to write a counter-article debunking the author, that things are nothing like that, and that Soviet nuclear energy is at par with the West, etc. This operation was carried out. So they directed all their efforts towards harmonizing these speeds to make a dry channel. That is why the calculations had to be very precise accounting for all the measures that were taken. He got them all from the metallurgical factories of Ukraine or somewhere else, and all of these materials were delivered. This third element was requested by the Finns. I remember how during the war there were two types of daily communications which were published in our newspapers or TASS reports: where we recaptured German-occupied points, where we retreated, where we took a large number of prisoners, where we suffered a partial defeat. And, indeed, in the hands of qualified people that did their job well, our devices seemed both reliable and safe to operate. And so, the scientific spirit and the scientific atmosphere in reactor engineering gradually began to submit to the engineering will, as it were, to the ministerial will. At this point, I want to say that, particularly in the initial period, considering the tragedy of the situation, considering such despair, I would say, considering the lack of technical means, lack of experience in handling such a large scale catastrophe, confusion and uncertainty could have easily arisen in decision making. This, as far as I can remember, was the only article that had a helpful, calming effect on others. But this reactor was not considered bad because of safety reasons. This is why the firefighters' actions were not only heroic but also very professional, thoughtful and correct. Of course, it would be best to use what we all eagerly wish for, the alternative sources: thermonuclear, solar, (sic), and the others. That put an end to this sort of thing. So I went to the institute;but before I reached, my car phone rang and one of Scherbinas subordinates told me that as per a request by Silaev to the General Secretary, I needed to go back to Chernobyl because Velikhovs unilateral actions were, for some reason, worrying Ivan Stepanovich. [1] Legasov admired the leadership of Boris Shcherbina, particularly for his ability to grasp what the specialists were telling him and his decision making. This was just as worrying. But the word maximally, in both cases, can never mean a 100 per cent reliability. But there was a nagging sense of anxiety. Hydrogen energy became an area of my close attention. And yet, because 10 years had been lost and because the international philosophy that every device had to be inside a containment was not necessarily adopted, these devices were introduced into the national infrastructure. The signal was encrypted according to defined procedure; during each and every deviation from normal operation, the station must inform the Ministry of Energy or whatever ministry it falls under about the situation by using a special code. Say, for the uppermost points, we found that the temperature range was around 300-350 degrees [Celsius]. And the quality of produced Zirconium becomes better, as well as of the pipes made out of it, or else the operating states become better, and everyone calms down until the next thing happens. I, as a chemist, was worried about the huge potential for chemical reactions in these devices. Because there are various ways that could lead to the addition of positive reactivity in such an uncontrollable reactor. I, With great difficulty, I managed to find the head of the department who, designed and operated the RBMK-type reactors, namely, such a reactor was, installed at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, - Alexander K. KALUGIN, who. And subsequently, from September onwards, all the work on the site of the Chernobyl station and within the contaminated zone was the responsibility of the Government Commission. Academician personally watched this, being on board the turntables. There were less than 10 rem. Because the questions of safety in nuclear energy are the most acute in various spheres of international public opinion, I was interested in comparing the real dangers, the real threats that nuclear energy carries to the threats of other energy systems. At that time, the entire protection system was copied, probably from [TAPE ERASED] that existed in the industrial reactors and was using accumulated military experience. But the most demoralizing part, which makes one worried and sick, is that the measures needed are known.[22]. On April 26th, 1986, a nuclear explosion at the Chernobyl power plant rocked the area near the Ukrainian town of Pripyat, spreading giant clouds of radioactive material across 77,000 square miles of land. At least not at the age that I currently am, just into my fifties. The actions of the station management are very hard to explain. This plan was rejected on 26 April 1988, the day before his death. And strive for maximum reliability everywhere. Do you understand? Legasov: I probably cannot say because. And in the event of unlikely but possible troubles, these troubles would not spread to the surrounding environment, as is the case with accidents in mines. And our design organizations started to work with containments. One such unfortunate case was when some groups of soldiers had only a single dosimeter carried by their commander, who would estimate the [radiation] dose received by each soldier. 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. It seemed to them that they already understood everything in the scientific arena. I heard often that specialists, Kramerov Aleksander Yakovlevich in particular, while discussing these problems with Anatoly Petrovich Aleksandrov, made proposals to the [reactor] designer to change the accident protection system (APS), to improve the APS of this device, and they were not rejected. It is a noisy place; one can miss some auditory signals. And the very fact that the station could independently perform any actions not authorised by the experts is already a defect in the relationship of the experts with this station. They started the work. This is its distinctive feature, if we're not speaking of complex technical aspects. So, this was my own professional work to which I managed to attract most interesting young people who with style, with good education and understanding, are still developing this extremely interesting area of Chemical physicsfrom which Im sure will originate very many developments, important for practice and for education. Because of these differences a commission had to be formed and Anatoly Petrovich was asked to be an arbitrator to search for mistakes. [1] After a colleague said his leadership was still needed, he said "No, you dont understand. [1] Mikhail Gorbachev was furious and accused the nuclear designers of covering up dangerous problems with the Soviet nuclear industry for decades. He discovered. I understand this myself; scientific stewardship is a problem. [1] Spending four months in and around Chernobyl,[23] he received a high dose of radiation. Everyone was tense and anxious to get there quickly, to understand what had happened and to discover the scale of the disaster that we had to face. All this created such problems that it became evident that the shift method, in this case, was certainly not optimal. A lot of work was done when comrade Pologikh Boris Grigorievich led this group. Because of that it seems that all the decisions were correct. For if it had appeared, it would have appeared in the Chernobyl days. And the measures there were simple. So, if there is no threat of receiving 25 rem, then no one has the right to carry out an evacuation. I suppose what I am saying is that the institute, for the first time, managed to assemble a group of experts who looked at nuclear energy as a system, all elements of which should be equally efficient, equally safe and reliable; and depending on the size of one or the other element in the system, the quality of the entire nuclear energy system should be more or less optimum. That is why I advised, and Shcherbina agreed with me, to announce that we cannot tell about the precise duration of the evacuation yet. It means adding more and more instruments to it, some additional diagnostics tools and so on. And I was just delighted with the technical equipment and the culture of competence within this group. In the subordination of this Glaucus, frankly, boring, standard. He told me that he had issued appropriate orders, but I think those never got executed. So it had already become possible to judge the correctness of technical decisions. This is how the conditions for such disasters were created. Legasov: Of course, later they were all destroyed. Because a group of expertswho, you know, are like hurrah, go, go!they had so much influence that Sidorenko Viktor Alekseyevich, the director of the Department of Nuclear Reactors at our institute, the author of this doctoral dissertation and this book, was expelled from the institute. Valery Legassov transcriptions from his tapes Valery Legassov transcriptions from his tapes Open navigation menu Close suggestionsSearchSearch enChange Language All of this had to be invented and organized on the spot, successfully or otherwise. If there's one thing a specialist knows about a nuclear power plant, it's that it does not exhaust any gases. As Nikolai Ivanovich Ryzhkov said in the Politburo meeting on the 14th of July when discussing the issue, I have the impression that the country was slowly and steadily moving towards Chernobyl while developing its nuclear energy. He was absolutely correct. Even with long breaks for rest, the operators still had to be at the control panel for 10-12 hours. I assume there are 7 tapes as mentioned in the Chernobyl miniseries and have been released on YouTube, but can't seem to get my hands on it. New approaches were not welcomed. Such and such things have been implemented. In practice, this then turned out to be the best decision, as all the wells had been built and the measuring wells showed that there was practically no penetration of contaminated water into the ground. But with regards to this particular device [RBMK], they considered themselves absolute creators and owners. It had high temperatures which meant that we could use it in metallurgy, chemistry and oil refining. It was necessary to tackle the issue of checking the equipment in the 1st and 2nd blocks, of checking the remaining structure and equipment in the 3rd block. Why? This was the partnership. It was necessary to simultaneously organize a number of tasks that were of completely different types. That's probably what happened. After performing these initial estimates about the reactor activity, other problems began to concern to us. Grave mistakes. Firstly, the 3rd block was ordered to shut down. And further, to develop a philosophy that, as the experience of the Chernobyl accident shown, any device can cause trouble not only in the country where it is located but also in the neighbouring countries; and cause not only radiation damage but also economic and psychological losses in those countries. However, as I have already said, the robotic devices we had, be it our own or acquired from abroad, turned out to be practically useless in those conditions. Of course, much has been written about this and I myself was involved in describing the events that preceded the accident. But this work was unfortunately suspended at the very beginning, initially because of a serious illness of Aleksander Sergeyevich Kachanov and an inability to find an equivalent replacement, and then because of the subsequent Chernobyl events. So they voted him down at the elections to the Academic Council. 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. Boris Eudokimovich [Scherbina] remained the leader of the Government commission, but a decision was made that all further work on the site would be performed by a second group. Luckily, as I was later told by the director of the Kola NPP Volkov Aleksander Petrovich, the personnel were properly trained and very cautious. Firstly, because it would melt and a sufficient amount of energy would be spent in melting it. Anyway Also, there was an episode that I will talk about later. Perhaps I was too generous with the details, but I did explain why this accident had occurred. This is important because of this. It was, of course, not because we were taking part in liquidation of the consequences of such a tragic event. Around noon, a break was announced and I went up to the second floor, to the office of the Science Secretary Nikolay Sergeevich Babay to discuss the report. Legasov: Hope this isnt confusing to you. So it was impossible to load it into the helicopters, first of all. On 27 April 1988,[32] the day after the second anniversary of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant accident and one day before he was due to release the outcomes of the investigation into the causes of the disaster,[23] Legasov hanged himself in the stairwell of his Moscow apartment[33] (though some sources say inside his apartment,[34][35] others in his office[23]). From this perspective, there was no understanding of the steps that needed to be taken, neither from station personnel nor from the Ministry of Energy. [5] While Legasov attempted to include all the top scientists in the new organization, many objected to Legasov being given a top leadership position, considering him an upstart. So, from my point of view, this was a philosophical mistake; allowing operation of stations without an external localisation shelter. 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. This doesnt mean that the spreading of radioactivity ended. This, altogether, is a serious question about how to, and to what extent, cover such large, very unpleasant and difficult events that affect and alarm almost the entire population of the country, and not merely our country. It has all the designers; everyone remained with them, whereas the Ministry of Energy is purely an operational institution. the building of the city party committee, located in the central square of the city. They showed that the reactor housing may not last for 30-40 years per the project parameters, but may function for substantially lesser time. Many supervisors that should have been on the staff were just absent. So contaminated it was that he personally smashed it to pieces with a hammer. He got into everything. You know, I was not met with understanding anywhere. Legasov continued his attempts to introduce reforms in academic chemistry by establishing an interdepartmental council to try to overcome stagnation in the field. Because the safety of the device in case of some abnormal behaviour For example, a positive reactivity coefficient in this device, should it start to develop, become noticeable, then the operator, and only the operator, could lower the emergency rods. Physicists make up the majority. s01e05 - Vichnaya Pamyat - Chernobyl Transcripts . They worked very diligently, with great speed and efficiency. They, of course, spent most of their time on-site. I cannot exactly tell how much time he spent in Chernobyl, and took the most thorough part in data collection, their correct estimation, researching the history of the appearance of contamination spots. And Anatoly Petrovich had such a humanly understandable and even likeable trait, namely, reliance on people with whom he has worked for many years. The living accomodations, however, were placed in the city of Ivankov, which was 50 km from Chernobyl. There are questions like why was it announced so late? The radiation conditions in Pripyat were considerably worse than normal, but at the time did not pose any significant danger to the people in the city. These were the problems that I was researching. This is my point of view but I dont know how this will turn out. But these experiments showed that the products of combustion will nevertheless carry away a large amount of radioactivity with them. No information was received about radiation-related injuries and this fact, while not conclusive, did calm us down somewhat. Heres a way to organize work on construction sites: inconsistency in different types of production, say, the production of fuel elements; the machine-building equipment, the unpreparedness of builders to accept this equipment on time; garbage on construction sites; constant, incomprehensible changes in the number of construction staff (by construction I mean at nuclear power plants), at times too many, at others too few. In such a way, many personal items that people took with them got out of Pripyat and carried the contamination with them. Sometime around the end of August, September or October, when the city was in a condition which allowed it to be preserved; it was safe to be in this didnt mean that the city could be inhabited normally, but that the city no longer posed any immediate danger was thanks to the armys efforts. First - carefully studying the available information. All of this, in my opinion, has to be described in this section as obvious and clear. This was sort of central, very important task. The correct decision was made during the time of comrade Vedernikov. Our main goal was to prevent 2,500 degrees there. Legasov: Armen Artavazdovich, a good man. He exposes scary things towards the end.Our Goal:The original tapes are unfortunately not available, but there are original Russian transcripts. The explosion happened in such a way that Pripyat was bypassed from both sides [by the fallout]. It is hard for me to say what is going on there. For example, different groups in June provided different estimates of the radioactivity that had escaped reactor number 4. He listened very carefully (I thought that it would be hard for the country to supply so much material in a matter of days) and as I got to know later, ordered 6000 tons of lead, because he thought that we could have made a mistake in our calculations and it would be better to have surplus lead instead of not having enough. Bryukhanov was accused of mismanagement and that operator error was the primary cause of the accident, while design flaws were also a factor. This blog is dedicaded to the text that comes from academician V.Legasov audio tapes which he recorded after the Chernobyl accident and not long before his death. There were no unmanned aircraft that could be fitted with the necessary measuring equipment at the time of the accident, in the beginning, to be precise. And then. But this had not been done before and the device worked with values of positive reactivity coefficients much higher than a beta in the first place. Valery Alekseyevich Legasov (Russian: ; 1 September 1936 - 27 April 1988) was a Soviet and Russian inorganic chemist and a member of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union. 2400 tons of lead was dropped. This was how I first heard from the reactor people who spoke about serious things in a calm, matter-of-fact manner, that our modern nuclear energy based on VVER and RBMK is dangerous and requires additional serious measures to be taken. For decades will turn out, later they were all the measures needed are known [! Philosophical mistake ; allowing operation of stations without an external localisation shelter me to say such a tragic event been! An interdepartmental Council to try to overcome stagnation in the city, it would have valery legasov tapes transcript in the,. 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