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. Thanks to the arrival of comrade Voronin, the overall scheme of work management had started to form. Generally, one of their tasks was to put various sensors in reactor number 4 for measuring gamma fields, neutron fields, measuring temperature, measuring airflow, measuring the hydrogen concentration sensors should it suddenly appear in the system, etc. Of course there was no basis whatsoever to carry out such a work because we more or less knew where most of the radioactivity was distributed around each reactor zone. The next question arose when it became clear that the crater of the wrecked fourth block was exhausting a lot of radioactive gas. I graduated from the Faculty of Physicochemical Engineering of the Moscow Institute of Chemistry and Technology named after Mendeleyev. That is why the calculations had to be very precise accounting for all the measures that were taken. They are trying to increase the reliability of the reactor so that there would not be an accident. But then, in a conversation, he said that RBMK reactors are very dangerous. [7] At Tomsk Polytechnic University, he started researching gaseous uranium hexachloride in a gaseous fission reactor. And I was just delighted with the technical equipment and the culture of competence within this group. 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. Same as the Americans. It played the role of iron but without the oxidisation. It was used for such cases when, say, key decisions were taken like whether to make the RBMK 1500, or whether to introduce a heat exchange intensifier to this reactor. The crater in the reactor produced a column of white smoke, several hundred metres long, most likely consisting of graphite combustion byproducts. How can I listen to Valery Legasov tapes? And everything around is clean. It was difficult to determine if they were the parachutes burning that had been used to drop the lead and other materials. Rather curtly, he stated that they had somewhat messed something up, and an accident of sorts had occurred there, but this would not stop the overall development of the atomic energy program. However, the particles would agglomerate in the air and fall down again within the station territory. Thats why I personally and also the military specialists [had to go there]who by this time had very successfully deployed a research centre at the village of Ovruch that allowed a large contingent of military specialists to consciously perform decontamination tasks, measurement tasks, all the tasks that they had been assigned. It only handles the operation, nothing more. They gathered at the table and doled out houses and posts to themselves. [13][9] In 1967,[citation needed] he defended his thesis at the Kurchatov Institute, under the supervisor Isaak Kikoin, on the synthesis of compounds of noble gases and the study of their properties[citation needed]. I saw this; it bothered me. Adamovich: Sorry, but the first commission, they must have then called. I have the transcript for the first tape, which I want to post first, but it is in Russian and I need it translated in English. This plan was rejected on 26 April 1988, the day before his death. My first impression was that I hadnt come to a nuclear station. They really did not like interference in their professional work by outsiders. The rules that they had worked out prior to this accident were as follows. I wanted to prove to him that most likely the cause of that accident was in no way related to the Chernobyl accident because of fundamental differences in the construction of reactors. Legasov: Check that. 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. The fact that representatives of Government Nuclear Energy Supervision (GNES) were present at the station, but were unaware of the ongoing experiment, were unaware of this programmethis is not just a fact of the stations biography, but a fact of the biography of the GNES employees, and the existence of this system itself. The group led by Evgeny Ivanovich Vorobiev was assigned to handle all the medical problems. These sensors were placed in various spots. Try to move aside and do something different than what was done before you. And so, on the night of the 26th of April, all four types of codes for all types of possible hazards appeared at the Ministry of Energy. The Government Commission's meeting was led very vigorously, in his usual manner, by Boris Yevdokimovich Shcherbina. Secondly, we cannot talk about the hydrogen explosion without mentioning that, in addition to the steam explosion, chemical energy related to interactions within all that molten mass was added. [5] Boris Shcherbina said of him: "Valery was too great, I loved him more than all the people I knew, he gave all of himself to work, to Chernobyl. This is nuclear and non-nuclear chemistry. I was sort of the proponent of this idea and so I couldnt accept the offer of postgraduate studies and left for Tomsk. Valery Legassov Transcriptions | PDF | Chernobyl Disaster | Radioactive Decay Valery Legassov transcriptions - Free download as PDF File (.pdf), Text File (.txt) or read online for free. The information was not enough, we were, preparing for some unusual work and therefore the, with long pauses and, in general, everyone was in suspense and each of us, Remembering this road now, I must say that it never occurred to me then that we, are moving to meet an event of a planetary scale, an event that will probably go, down in the history of mankind like the eruption of famous volcanoes, for, example, the death of people in Pompeii or that do not be close to this. I will repeat myself that groundwater was relatively close to the surface under the station. With the same . That we will need nuclear sources in an ever-increasing amount, firstly due to economic considerations, resources and secondly, environmental. And magnesium oxide, the most heat-conducting of all ceramics, similarly carried the heat away. After the 2nd of May, we stopped the drops for some time. Everyone worked as a single collective, attempting to find the best solution. And it has not been carried over to the chemical industry, where we could have a Bhopal at any moment, you see, because of this very reason of the wrong philosophy. Initially, I suggested dropping iron shot. He was the real Soviet Union nuclear physicist who was in charge of investigating the disaster. As western experts have shown after our report at the IAEA. Second, we had to predict the possible behaviour of the fuel mass, possible outcome scenarios and appropriate courses of action to those scenarios. This work was very meticulously organized. And at 8.40 pm, approximately, the first meeting of the Government Commission was held in Pripyat itself in the city committee of the party. And if we took the accumulated statistics, then the statistics on the operation of RBMK reactors were minimal compared to the VVER. Of course, samples of Plutonium, as well as other heavy alpha-active elements, were collected continuously to compare the data gathered by the helicopters and through the direct collection. Valery Alekseevich Legasov About the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant Academician V. Legasov (text from cassette N1) During this time the Operative group was constantly trying to provide maximum protection for the people and judging from possible degrees of contamination decide on a compensation amount that would be necessary for the evacuees. And it is very important to describe the measures that were taken and their significance. So all the nitrogen we suppliedand we did find a place for to supplying itleaked out of the zone and cooled nothing. And, indeed, in the hands of qualified people that did their job well, our devices seemed both reliable and safe to operate. The next operation was applying a special layer to the already-cleared ground and concreting it. Of course, I did understand the design of this reactor but not in as much detail as a member of the Government Commission would need to in such an emergency. Adamovich: Whats his name and patronymic? And these problems were not easily solved. But still, this is the fault of the officials. 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]). To make direct measurements of the reactor, Legasov was driven in an armored personnel carrier to the site which established the reactor had shut down. And so, along with a lot of very accurate depictions and comments, there were a lot of inaccuracies. But, I will repeat, this was because unforeseen circumstances cropped up constantly. So it was impossible to load it into the helicopters, first of all. This organizational aspect should also be described. About nitrogen. The first decontamination efforts began even while the conglomeration processes inside reactor number 4 were ongoing. During this break, Slavskys First Deputy, Meshkov Alexander Grigorievich, his First Deputy who was later fired because of this accident. While I mostly just provide simple corrections and rephrasings, I sometimes use DeepL to translate passages from the original transcript to figure out what was meant - and when I'm truly desperate I text a Russian friend for a translation of a passage. But even DT-5 was not there in sufficient quantities when we arrived. The treatment of roads had begun, and the initial preparations started in front of reactor number 4 for the construction of the sarcophagus. )", "Chemist, investigator of Chernobyl nuclear accident dies at 51", "Legasov suicide leaves unanswered questions", INSAG-7 The Chernobyl Accident: Updating of INSAG-1, "A bust of Hero of Russia Valery Alekseevich Legasov will be installed in Tula", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Valery_Legasov&oldid=1133988963, Chief Scientific Advisor of the commission investigating the Chernobyl disaster, This page was last edited on 16 January 2023, at 13:14. It was announced that it would be the permanent commision, and it would be replaced by a stand-in. So we started taking various measurements using a specially-designed collimator, which showed that the activity on the roof is not the only source affecting the radiation conditions in the 3rd block. And when Nikolai Ivanovich Rizhkov in a politburo meeting spoke his words about how nuclear energy was inevitably moving towards a grave accident, immediately all these facts, accumulated over many years, somehow aligned in my mind, and his words highlighted that it really was so. In the accident, no one was killed or exposed to radiation. Since I didnt have administrative authority over this department but generally understood many specific details of what was going on, and because I was concerned, I began to suggest to the reactor department an engineering, not physical, approach to solving problems. So I, after wasting a year, have to return to my proposal and these RBMK reactors still cannot be considered reliable. Because the final decisions were taken collectively by the Government Commission or by Shcherbina personally. Legasov: I saw him on the first day I arrived there. Two people had died, others were in hospital and the radiation conditions in the station were rather complex. 56 in Moscow and graduated with a gold medal. On the other hand, people were contaminated; and their things were contaminated. Say, for the uppermost points, we found that the temperature range was around 300-350 degrees [Celsius]. We went in and bought ourselves some very nice shirts. How many areas, and people, were affected and to what degree; what has already been restored and what hasnt. It was necessary to accommodate the army divisions as well as the various construction organizations that had arrived to help solve this situation. There were very large gaps that could not hold the concrete, preventing it from hardening, and making it impossible to set up the base for the subsequent construction elements. He always listened to our scientific discussionswhat we would talk about, what we would needand reacted instantly. 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. During the first days of the Chernobyl tragedy, the flaws in our information services were very evident. This is why Chernobylnow do you see why I started from so far back?it demonstrated that in the Soviet Union, even today after having survived Chernobyl, not a single dog understands this philosophy, that is so basic and simple, the three components of which I told you, even in the nuclear industry. I am very concerned about this problem. In it was an article criticizing the French for their active cooperation (an attempt of cooperation) with the Soviet Union in the field of nuclear technology. The primary work was being done using these cranes, but still many finishing tasks, that would increase the reliability of the sarcophagus, had to be done by hand or by using various robotic devices. It was led by comrade Petrov who had arrived here earlier. There were no dosimeters with proper scales for minimum to maximum doses. It is about 15-20 years within which all the questions we are discussing here must be resolved. Some personal impressions of the time . That was accurate TASS information but along with it were many journalistic articles about specific battles, about specific people, about heroes at the home front, etc. But here, suddenly, there was a crimson glow in half the sky and white smoke streaming out of the reactor. In a word, the hotel, pretty decent, was near and here we were greeted by the, Do not sell or share my personal information. There is another definite circumstance to it. "[5] That afternoon, he briefly visited his daughter. The fire and explosion was widely regarded as the most catastrophic. And finally, sand. To this day, I haven't heard of a single case where contaminated water had to be pumped out. This means that a rapid expansion of steam, constantly thermally heated, led to the damage that was witnessed. In the end it appeared that the GeoChem group was wrong, because their samples were taken in such a condition that they had included plutonium used in weapons coming from nuclear explosion period. The time available to solve it is not too small but not too much either. The transfer was entirely unjustified. You know, similar to our current state quality control, a lot of specialists appeared that were not involved in engineering or scientific activities. Do you understand? Viktor Alekseyevich Sidorenko had repeatedly criticised it. It is clear that these localisation measures must be dynamic because it is economically and technically impossible to build containments over them. On this, they do; on that, they dont. This question was discussed at the Government Commission and was escalated to higher levels, and ultimately it was decided to defer the issue and that in the next year, 1987, and possibly in 1988, no construction work will be done on 5th and 6th blocks. As our press reported, the factory was built very poorly. The Legasov Tapes Featured August 16, 2019 Tape 1 side A Aym96/Wikimedia In all my life, it never occurred to me that I would have to start this part of my life. The first assumption was that it is the internal contamination of the building. This is when Aleksander Petrovich and Vyacheslav Pavlovich Volkov, director of the Kola and then the Zaporozhye nuclear power stations, recently told me about an episode, where a group of his comrades visited the Kola station, and witnessed, in his opinion, a complete disorder in the organisation of the technical process. There were many books for experts, thick and accurate, well-written; these were stored in the libraries. [20][21] He had been involved in work on industrial safely with the GKNT (State Committee for Science and Technology), in which he had explored the risks involved in energy generation. This is Previous: led strip light 5630 5730 12v 5m waterproof stripe flexible diode tape 300led cold white warm whit Legasov: Or I will. Mayorec was already there, having arrived before the Government Commission. And then the Atommash factory was specially built to make cases for such reactors. The maximum rate of combustion under the temperatures we established (the temperature of graphite combustion) is around a ton per hour. The more nuclear power stations were built, the more real became the danger of something happening at some point in time. But three projects became very successful, where we found good partners, and where we put in the maximum effort, using the highest levels of the government, using the authority of Anatoly Pavlovich and the Central Committee of the party. All the effort of decontaminators needed to be focussed on fully normalizing the conditions in the 3rd block and also on cleaning the construction base. Valery Legassov transcriptions from his tapes Valery Legassov transcriptions from his tapes Open navigation menu Close suggestionsSearchSearch enChange Language in Law, National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy (Graduated 2022) 3 y Related This meant that they did not have time to inform some of the people or that they had come from somewhere else. A few words about the conditions in which the Government Commission had been functioning. The first was about the population. The first thing to do was reconnaissance. Two of these ten projects, I am afraid, will have the same fate, and for roughly the same reasons. Legasov: Well, how should I put this. This was quite unexpected. Because in the military industry, with a limited number of devices, strict military acceptance at multiple timesmilitary acceptance at the manufacturer, military acceptance during the operationmultiple examinations, staff retraining, etc And when you suddenly, with the same device, enter the domestic infrastructure where there is nothing similarno simulators, no training systems, no training systems at all, not to mention the training systems for emergencies. We dropped another 80 tonnes of lead; that was the last large drop. Before him, Viktor Alekseyevich Sidorenko worked as the director of the department of nuclear reactors. All this had a reassuring effect. A number of technological instruments had been replaced with either Swedish or their own, and ours had been taken out of operation. We need to think about some special measures to localize accidents for those 28 devices that dont have containments. However, on the other hand, it was plain to see how he crumpled that package of money, not like a prize. Later, that work was assigned to comrade Batalin, the Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers. And that I must be at Vnukovo, at the airport, at 4 oclock to fly out. It was in this way that the first task, that of introducing as many neutron absorbers as we could, was fulfilled. Because there are various ways that could lead to the addition of positive reactivity in such an uncontrollable reactor. Two weeks later, on August 25, Valery Legasov, wearing a gray suit and striped tie, his face puffy and haggard behind thick glasses, took the floor on the opening day of the special . Because his laboratory was a kind of cell that posed questions and formulated them physically; while the answers to these questions were given by specialists, not only from the various departments of the Institute but also from different institutes. According to that register, all the materials that had been tested would be handed over to the Army to use in decontamination tasks. Its clear that a human is irreplaceable when one has to perform certain complex tasks like a cargo drop or some other operation involving large devices placed on a helicopter. The explosion was volumetric in nature. [1] Legasov recorded his memoir The Legasov Testament using audio tapes[7][30] where he described his involvement with the Chernobyl liquidation. They lost 17 people there, the Americans. We had to introduce an element that would absorb heat due to chemical energy and transform, in the same way we boil tea, would take away the heat and so on. At the same time, the enormous amount of work done by the dosimetrists, the modest work of young people, say, from Kurchatov Institute led by Shekalov or Borov or Vasiliev, the work of Ryanovskaya [] group led by Petrov, the work of Kombanov who was there many times to test his dust suppression solutions, the logic of all the work, an analysis of the projects that were undertakenthis wasnt described properly. Very interestingly, the station staff consisted of 45 people, if I recall correctly, who had to plan the reloading operation; that is they planned who, of the people that didn't work at the station, had to participate in the reloading. That put an end to this sort of thing. Prezi. This, in my opinion, was a defect in the communication system, firstly. And a huge number of friendly telegrams, a great amount of benevolent advice: what to do, how to extinguish the fire and so on. 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. The RBMK reactor was not equipped with such a second protection system that was operator-independent and not part of the control system. There was a team for this. I remember an episode well when we, with General Kuncevich, arrived at Pripyat. But nothing of the kind, of course, was done. And each one accumulates experience and mistakes, and all of it belongs to all humankind. The first four tapes feature only Legasov giving a recounting of the entire event, from the moment he learned of the accident to his final days at the Kurchatov Institute. Work, so to say, is progressing on the station, then abruptly stops because one or the other equipment is not there. 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