It happened like this
that the Chernobyl disaster public opinion countries of the CIS and the whole world perceives as the apotheosis of the irresponsibility of the Soviet nuclear scientists and the first step towards the collapse of the USSR.

But is everything so unambiguous in the usual picture of the accusers of the Soviet nuclear "sloppiness"? This is what we are now trying to find out.

On the twentieth anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster - April 26, 2006 - the First Channel of Russian Television showed a documentary film by the famous Russian TV journalist Dmitry Medvedev "Liquidator". Formally, Medvedev's "Liquidator" was dedicated to tragic death Academician Legasov, who led the so-called liquidation work at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, starting immediately after the disaster itself. But this film was truly a bolt from the blue in the established ideas about the Chernobyl disaster of the vast majority of Russians who watched this truly sensational TV movie.

So, it is well known that in 1988 Academician Legasov committed suicide by hanging himself in his own office. Medvedev questions in his film official version death of academician Legasov - suicide due to the oppressed state of the psyche. Allegedly, the head of the liquidation work at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant received during business trips to the site nuclear disaster a large dose of radiation, moreover, he often had to quickly resolve very dangerous issues, an error in solving which could have very serious consequences. In general, the psyche of the academician could not stand it, and he settled scores with his life with the help of a noose.

The film "Liquidator" cites the testimonies of Legasov's relatives and close friends, who vehemently refute the allegations of the academician's depressed state of mind. Moreover, a very strange detail is given about the method of suicide of the main liquidator of the consequences of the Chernobyl disaster. It turns out that in the desk drawer in Legasov's office there was a nominal pistol, but for some reason the academician preferred to hang himself a few steps from his desk than to commit suicide in a more noble way - by shooting himself with this very nominal pistol.

Filim Dmitry Medvedev "Liquidator"

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But in the very interesting place, where, according to the logic of this message, Legasov was supposed to comment on the official preliminary version of the Chernobyl disaster, voiced by the General Secretary of the CPSU M. Gorbachev himself, someone erased part of the tape.

In the same 1988, immediately after the death of Academician Legasov, an article appeared in the main party newspaper Pravda, devoted to the true causes of the Chernobyl disaster. The fact is that until this very moment there was only a preliminary version of the explosion of the Fourth Chernobyl reactor, and Gorbachev promised the country and the entire world community to conduct a thorough and reliable investigation into this matter.

So, from the pages of the main party newspaper it was stated that the so-called thermal explosion occurred at the fourth reactor, which happened as a result of the unprofessional actions of the maintenance personnel of the fourth power unit. In addition, according to the author of the article, there was information that at the fourth reactor, which was already being decommissioned for scheduled repairs, some experiments were carried out, which, in fact, are strictly prohibited in the existing nuclear reactors intended for industrial power generation. And, as the pinnacle of the results of the investigation into the causes of the Chernobyl disaster, this article drew up an almost minute-by-minute timetable of the development of events that led to the thermal explosion of the fourth reactor.

But the most interesting thing is that the author of the above-mentioned article in Pravda was a certain lieutenant colonel Veremeev, who was a professional sapper and had nothing to do with nuclear physics. And, what really didn’t fit into any gates, this lieutenant colonel-sapper appeared at the site of the Chernobyl disaster only in 1988, that is, 2 years after the disaster itself, but he managed to draw up a minute-by-minute schedule for the development of the prerequisites for the explosion of the fourth reactor!

The article about the causes of the Chernobyl disaster by the self-taught nuclear scientist Veremeev, following Pravda, was reprinted by all the main Soviet newspapers. And over time, Lieutenant Colonel Veremeev’s article began to be referred to as the ultimate truth. However, D. Medvedev draws attention to the fact that it was Academician Legasov who was supposed to prepare the final report on the causes of the Chernobyl disaster. But he suddenly died, and our miracle sapper took over. True, shortly before his death, Legasov for some reason decided to utter a message about the causes and consequences of the Chernobyl tragedy, part of which turned out to be erased ...

The author of these lines remembers the events of 1988, when an article by sapper Veremeev appeared in Pravda. Rumors spread across the country that nuclear scientists were sabotaging the investigation into the real causes of the Chernobyl disaster. And the “anti-perestroika forces” within the party and the state are trying to use the “sabotage of academicians” to undermine the authority of our main “perestroika”. It is noteworthy that not a single scientific publication has ever reprinted the conclusions of the self-taught nuclear scientist Veremeev.

But towards the end of his film, D. Medvedev reproduces sensational information about some of the events that preceded the explosion of the fourth reactor of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, as well as testimonies about the catastrophe of the employees of the fourth power unit of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, which were classified on the personal instructions of Gorbachev. These materials have recently been declassified.

In general, all these facts published by the author of the film "Liquidator" claim to open a new criminal case on the circumstances of the death of academician Legasov and the falsification of the version of the Chernobyl disaster.

But that's not all. It turns out that 25 seconds before the explosion of the fourth reactor, many seismic stations scattered around the globe, recorded a strange high-frequency seismic wave. The oddity of this seismic wave was that the spectrum of frequencies accompanying seismic waves, say, during earthquakes, is much lower. At first, the aforementioned high-frequency seismic wave was considered a consequence of the explosion of the fourth reactor, but later it was found out that the explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant occurred 25 seconds later. And the most remarkable thing is that the source of this very high-frequency seismic wave was almost under the fourth power unit of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. The nature of the occurrence of a strange high-frequency seismic wave has not yet been explained by any natural natural causes can not. Although what took place almost directly under the fourth Chernobyl reactor was more like a very powerful local earthquake.

Therefore, some independent experts came to sensational conclusions: it is quite possible that sabotage was committed against the Chernobyl nuclear power plant using the latest means of warfare - beam weapons installed on artificial satellite earth, or the so-called remote geotectonic weapons.

At this point, many readers may exclaim: eka, where did the author go, in science fiction! But there is no need to rush to such conclusions. The fact is, we know very little the true details of the arms race in times cold war. For example, the creators of the series documentaries on Channel One under the name "Shock Force" in one of their films they told the audience a no less fantastic story of the use of a Soviet combat laser on an American space shuttle. At the same time, the authors of Strike Force referred to recently declassified documents.

It was in 1984 at a Soviet military training ground near Lake Balkhash (East Kazakhstan). There, tests of the combat domestic laser "Terra-3" took place. The specificity of such tests lies in the fact that during the passage of spy satellites over the range, the tests are temporarily stopped until the satellite leaves this sector. But at that time, the American space shuttle Columbia flew over Balkhash (the same one that later crashed in 2003). A space shuttle, unlike a spy satellite, has the ability to adjust its orbit. Therefore, "Columbia" flew over the test site again, and then again, preventing military scientists from working normally. In the end, the Soviet authorities got tired of this, and they gave the task of pointing the Terra-3 laser at the American space shuttle and giving it an impulse. And although the power of our combat laser was reduced to the minimum possible, the result was very impressive. On board Columbia, communication with the earth was disrupted for several minutes, and the crew of the space shuttle felt a sharp deterioration in well-being.

It is noteworthy that the employees of the fourth power unit of the Chernobyl NPP, a few minutes before the explosion of the reactor, also felt a sharp deterioration in their health. By the way, in their testimony they categorically denied any violations in the reactor control regulations. According to them, everything happened in just a few minutes: incomprehensible vibrations and noise began in the reactor hall, which ended in an explosion of the reactor. According to eyewitness accounts, the explosion of the Chernobyl reactor was reminiscent of frames from a science fiction movie: a column of flame about a hundred meters rose into the sky above the building of the fourth power unit, and a few seconds later another column of flame soared into the sky - several times higher than the first.

Meanwhile, at a meeting of the Politburo, the testimony of eyewitnesses to the tragedy was questioned: they say that the Chernobyl employees experienced a huge psychological shock and inadequately perceived the events. Gorbachev authorized Legasov to look for other, more "mundane" causes of the Chernobyl disaster - we will be ridiculed by the entire world community!

As you know, the search for truth led academician Legasov into a loop, and on the magnetic tape of the recorder, someone erased the record with the words of the academician, dedicated specifically to the preliminary version of the explosion at the fourth power unit.

But still, what happened at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the early morning of April 26, 1986? And if the version about a specially planned sabotage is true, who did it and why?

Now, at a time of complete ideological agreement and the desire to enter the global economy, it has somehow become unfashionable to recall the situation that had developed by the mid-80s of the last century.

The global confrontation between the US and the USSR reached its maximum, and it was then that various plans for the creation of the latest types of weapons of mass destruction began to be carried out at a rather feverish pace. The SDI alone (Strategic Defense Initiative) of US President Reagan was worth something! But in addition to military-technological goals, the initiation of the Chernobyl disaster had a great geopolitical and geo-economic effect. And when military-political goals are combined with global economic goals, certain circles are capable of committing any crime.

Let's delve into the past for a few more years and take a closer look at the situation in the world at the end of the 70s of the twentieth century.

After another Arab-Israeli war, OPEC countries (the world cartel of oil producers) increased oil prices several times. The economies of the Western countries were in a permanent crisis. As a response to rising oil prices, the search for so-called alternative sources energy.

In the United States, the APEC program (adiabatic thermal power plant) was actively deployed, which could use the temperature difference between ocean water near the equator on the surface and at a depth of 1000 meters. This difference is very small, only twenty degrees Celsius, but the reserves of ocean water are practically inexhaustible. The best forces of the military-technological giants of America - Boeing, Lockheed, Martin-Marietta and others - have been thrown into the implementation of this project. Do not forget that at that time the so-called Detente (or Detente in the Russian version) was in vogue in politics, and the then US President Jimmy Carter, by transferring the efforts of military-industrial corporations to the APEC project, killed two birds with one stone: he solved the energy problem and deepened this Detent.

In 1985, it was planned to complete the construction of the first experimental APEC, in 1990 - the first industrial APEC. Moreover, it was assumed that by the middle of the 21st century, most of the US needs for energy resources should have been met through the APEC development program.

On the other side of the Atlantic, in the FRG, an active development of the newest nuclear power program was going on - the creation of a high-temperature gas-cooled fast neutron breeder reactor. This new reactor should work in conjunction with the so-called helium turbine, which should be fed by the inert gas helium heated in a fast neutron breeder reactor to 981 degrees Celsius. The efficiency factor (coefficient of performance) of the aforementioned helium turbine is simply fantastic - 60 percent! The problem of fresh nuclear fuel was solved - in the breeder reactor, it should not decrease, but, on the contrary, be added. The use of the inert gas helium as a working fluid solved many problems of both technology and environmental safety.

Germany, and with it the European Union, received energy independence and conditions for the sustainable development of its energy industry for the next few thousand years.

Everything would be just fine, but transnational oil and gas corporations, with such a vector of development of the world energy industry, lost their profits and practically slipped to the sidelines of the global energy business. And they began to act.

The first blow came to US President Jimmy Carter (1976-1980), who was the initiator of the APEC program. In order to cover up this very APEC program, it was necessary to prevent the re-election of Jimmy Carter for a second presidential term. One of the actions to create a negative image for Jimmy Carter was the disruption of the operation of American intelligence agencies to rescue American hostage diplomats from the seized building of the American embassy in Tehran in the spring of 1980. During this unsuccessful action, five of the six helicopters used in this operation were simultaneously disabled by the Americans. The probability of an arbitrary accident is negligible, and, most likely, one of their own made these helicopters unusable. Interested parties, as they say, did not stand up for the price.

The 1980 US presidential election was won by Ronald Reagan, who promptly shut down the APEC program. However, something had to be done with the idle US military-industrial corporations that had already invested heavily in the APEC program.

This is where the notorious SDI was born. America was promised protection from Soviet nuclear missiles, and the same military-industrial corporations were promised fabulous profits. While scientists and experts various countries the world scathingly criticized the retired Hollywood actor for the presidency of the United States, calling SDI "star wars", oil and gas corporations triumphed. Their future was secured.

However, there remained a European program to create a high-temperature gas-cooled fast neutron breeder reactor. The jurisdiction of the "star cowboy" did not extend to Europe. This is where, apparently, the plan of sabotage at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant arose. Everything was taken into account - both the wind rose, which made it possible to scatter nuclear fallout as much as possible throughout Europe, and the sharp drop in the authority of the USSR in the external and internal arena, and most importantly, it was possible to discredit the very idea of ​​​​nuclear energy. Plus, try out some developments on the path of "Star Wars".

It is curious, but the "green" movement in Europe appeared somewhere towards the end of the 70s of the last century. Coincidence? May be. But it was the “greens” who played the role of the main striking force in closing the program to create a high-temperature gas-cooled fast neutron breeder reactor, launching a hysterical campaign immediately after the Chernobyl disaster. After that, the "greens" in Germany entered big politics. And in 1998, they, in alliance with the Social Democrats, came to power in Germany on the condition of the complete closure of nuclear power plants in the country.

German power engineering companies, which will have to suffer significant losses after the closure of nuclear energy in their country, following the example of the US authorities in the early 1980s, were offered a replacement in the form of the possibility of producing combined cycle power plants. These are power plants in which gas is first burned in gas turbines, and then enters steam generators, the steam from which rotates steam turbines. The efficiency of such combined cycle power plants, which are being developed by German companies, reaches 55%. For example: the efficiency of the best thermal power plant does not exceed 35%. All this is justified by the recently entered into force "Kyoto Protocol", which limits the emissions of "greenhouse gases" into the Earth's atmosphere.

Indeed, per unit of generated electricity, combined-cycle power plants emit almost half as much environment these "greenhouse gases". But the most curious thing is that combined-cycle power plants can operate only on natural or associated petroleum gas. And so it happened that both the wolves are fed (that is, oil and gas corporations) and the sheep are safe (malicious nuclear power plants are closed, rejoice at the "green" idea!).

It remains to find out the last thing: why did Gorbachev so persistently ignore the testimony of eyewitnesses and the opinion of nuclear scientists, and why was the publication of an article by the self-taught nuclear scientist Veremeev in the Pravda newspaper authorized?

The answer may lie in the fact that all the prospective development of the economy of the USSR in the 80-90s. was founded taking into account the advanced construction of nuclear energy facilities (from large power plants with reactors of "millionaires" to hot-water nuclear reactors for heating residential villages) while boosting the export of hydrocarbons abroad to obtain convertible currency. And the Chernobyl disaster was just the right thing to do as a reason to start a "deep reform" of the Soviet economy according to the author's recipes, not by night, be the aforementioned "perestroika".

It was not until mid-May 1986 that anxiety swept over the whole of Ukraine. All children under the age of 14 were evacuated from Kyiv. Several months passed before shocking and frightening articles began to appear in the press about the Chernobyl accident and the consequences that it could entail. Literally six months later, a report appeared in "Vecherniy Kiev" from the construction site of the "Shelter" object - young guys-builders were photographed against the background of the "sarcophagus", over which they placed the slogan "We will complete the task of the party." It seemed - and so the newspapers wrote - the atomic genie was driven into a concrete vessel.

The Chernobyl nuclear power plant is the flagship and pride of the power industry of Soviet Ukraine, the largest producer of electricity in the European territory of the USSR. So it was on April 25, 1986. Then the night came when the next experiment was to be carried out. It was planned long before this date. But there were two explosions at the fourth power unit.

Nuclear disaster

The belief that a peaceful atom works at the station was cultivated and supported in every possible way. And why did the unthinkable happen? It did not fit in the minds: the reactor could not, should not have exploded!

A bit of history

The official start of construction is 1970. But the project needed to be finalized, so the solemn laying of the foundation of the nuclear power plant took place on August 15, 1972.

In 1977, the construction of the main building and two power units was completed. In the same year, on September 27, the first block of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant entered the Unified Energy System of the USSR. Six years later, the third and fourth blocks were built. They were not the last - in 1981, construction began on two more, which were supposed to increase the power of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant to six megawatts. In 1986, the plant was already producing 29 billion kilowatt-hours.

For the normal functioning of this giant, a city grew up just some three kilometers from the station on the banks of the Pripyat. It had everything for a comfortable life of nuclear scientists and their families.

Chronicle of the fatal experiment

The fourth power unit worked stably. Exactly at midnight, the fifth shift began to work - one of the best. These people had a chance to conduct tests that led to irreparable consequences.

Then it was important to find out how the reactor would behave if the power supply was interrupted and there was a need for an emergency connection of generators. Why was it needed - to draw up an algorithm of actions in case of sabotage or even war.

Experts knew: the reactor must be shut down, the operation of the turbine generator must be checked, after which the planned repairs will be carried out. But the scenario has changed dramatically.

The planned power reduction began on April 25, at one in the morning - the day before the disaster. Twelve hours later, the turbogenerator was disconnected from the network. From that time on, he provided energy for his own main pumps and other units. At two o'clock in the afternoon, the reactor emergency shutdown system and the forced circulation circuit were disconnected. For another nine hours, power declined predictably.

But at 11:10 p.m., what was done was a clear violation of the regulations for the operation of the reactor and safety precautions - the LAR (local automatic control system) was turned off. Power dropped sharply - from seven hundred megawatts it fell to thirty. The measuring instruments were out of balance, and the operator did not have an accurate picture of the physical processes that were going on in the reactor. At the reactor control panel, attempts began to even out the situation.

It took two hours. For the last 60 minutes in the 25th day of April 1986, they tried to manually balance the work of the measuring sensors. The first hour on the 26th day of April, the operators manually stabilized the power of the reactor and reduced its xenon poisoning, removed the absorbing rods. Then the events took an irreversible character:

1. On the control panel, reduce the operation of the pumps at 1 hour 23 minutes 4 seconds. Steam reactivity is noted, but there is no expected increase in power.
2. The operator after 34 seconds pressed the emergency protection button. The absorbing rods begin to descend, but they lack the operational reactivity margin and are let down by an unsuccessful design. And then there is a jump: the power increases sharply. The equipment detects repeated operation of the emergency protection button. Another 4 seconds - and measuring instruments fail. There are 8 seconds left before the explosions.
3. At 1 hour 23 minutes 50 seconds, the reactor exploded, scattering radioactive fragments of structures around and throwing clouds of the same radioactive dust into the atmosphere. A fire started.

Causes of the tragedy

Since the accident, various versions have been put forward. There is still no consensus.

Scientist's opinion

Academician V. Legasov, a participant in the liquidation of the Chernobyl accident, in the fall of 1987 wrote a material about the events that took place at that time at the power plant, entitled "My duty is to tell about it." But the article in the Pravda newspaper was not published. The conclusions that the scientist came to were for his contemporaries, ordinary Soviet people, something completely unthinkable. And they were horrified by their truth. This work saw the light only three weeks after his death, in May 1988.

“The plant workers made a number of gross mistakes, the designer was told a thousand times about the reactor’s errors, but he did not want additional work. But the main criminals are not the staff and not even the designer, but the leaders of the State Planning Commission. They also proved to them that it was dangerous and criminal to build nuclear power plants without caps, but they spat on this from the big bell tower, because the cap increased the price of each station by 30%, ”Academician V. Legasov wrote in his notes.

Alternative version

A nuclear power plant is a sensitive facility. And work there is possible only if the strictest discipline is observed. Like in the army. Nothing will work if the subordinate argues and builds his own conclusions.

Therefore, professionalism, knowledge of their functional duties and their precise execution were required from each employee. What should be done in a given situation was written step by step in the instructions. And specialists always followed them, and in that fateful shift too. But it turned out that there are simply no instructions for all occasions.

The "peaceful" atom after the explosion from Chernobyl flew to Leningrad, was discovered in Mordovia and Chuvashia. Then its different amount was recorded in the Arctic, Norway, Sweden. The direction of the wind changed - and radioactive elements rushed towards the Balkans, partially fell out in Asia Minor and North Africa, and then turned to the west. Having crossed the ocean, they reached Florida, where they were also discovered.

Radiation cataclysm

This accident was a disaster for the USSR. But the radioactive plume did not recognize borders, and distances did not really frighten him.

All forces - to eliminate the consequences

The station staff was alerted, and these people were the first to fight for the preservation of the rest of the power units. Despite the high level of radioactivity, they managed to isolate the station from the emergency fourth.

Firefighters, conscripts and conscripts, drivers, builders, miners - the tasks assigned to each of them were subordinated to a single goal: to stop the release of radioactive substances. And people did it - even in unimaginably difficult conditions, when the counter did not stop or even went off scale, but it was possible to work for only a few minutes.

The high level of training and discipline then, in the first days after the explosion, worked: at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, people did everything they could. At the cost of their own health and even life.

33 years later, when scientists already know much more about the "peaceful" atom, some actions of the liquidators are criticized. For example, now they say that it was wrong to throw sand and lead on the exploded reactor:

• each bag, landing, raised clouds of radioactive dust into the air;
• heavy coolies, falling from the helicopter, caused additional destruction;
• lead, under the influence of radiation and incredibly high temperatures, did not even reach the target and evaporated, supplementing the radioactive contamination with chemical.

But then, on April 26, 1886, when the level of radioactive contamination around the fourth block was prohibitive, this was perceived as the only possible solution. In order to stop the combustion of graphite in the reactor, mixtures with dolomite, boron carbide were used, later latex, rubber and other dust absorbers were used.

Now, after 33 years of studying that situation, experts say that filling the reactor with water was completely unnecessary and even dangerous. But people acted, guided by the instructions and knowledge available to them at that time. Many features of the behavior of a nuclear reactor were then simply unknown. And he had to be tamed.

After the decontamination of the territory and the construction of protective structures and structures, the reinforced concrete sarcophagus in November seemed to be able to exhale. But this temporary shelter turned out to be short-lived, large cracks appeared in it (their area was equal to a thousand square meters!), and the threat of radioactive contamination returned.

In 1997, the G7 countries agreed that for the sake of security, it is necessary to build Shelter-2. Work began in 2007, nine years later the arched structure was already pulled over the sarcophagus. The deadlines were pushed back: November 2017, then May 2018.

Kill zone

After the accident in Chernobyl, a deadly radioactive cloud "covered" a huge territory, its area exceeded 200 thousand square kilometers. In the Ukrainian SSR, Kiev and Zhytomyr regions suffered the most (especially in the north). A lot of precipitation fell in the Gomel (BSSR) and Bryansk (RSFSR) regions.

All information about previous accidents at nuclear facilities was classified. But they were, even at the same Chernobyl nuclear power plant, albeit not so large. And access to these documents had a limited number of specialists. Perhaps for this reason, the order for an emergency evacuation of people was given only at night, at 23:00, and also because they were waiting for the decision of the country's leadership. The population of Pripyat found out about this only the next day, April 27 at 13:10.

Due to the high levels of contamination of the territory with radioactive isotopes, 47 thousand people were evacuated from Pripyat on April 27 in two and a half hours. Then, when the exclusion zone on May 4 expanded to 30 kilometers, the number of evacuees increased almost three times. 179 settlements were empty.

Victims of the "peaceful" atom

The huge explosion that destroyed the reactor turned out to be not the biggest disaster. He claimed the life of the operator V. Khodemchuk (and remained under the rubble). The second dead is engineer V. Shashenyuk, who died in the morning in the Pripyat hospital.

Much more dangerous was the invisible and insidious enemy - radiation. She overtook everyone and hit in the most vulnerable places:

1. The first victims were the firefighters in the fourth block. Having received exorbitant levels of radiation, 28 people die from acute radiation sickness in three months. The death of three more was recognized as not related to exposure to radiation.
2. In total, during this time, 134 people were admitted to medical institutions with such a diagnosis. According to official data.
3. About 60,000 (according to the Russian Medical Dosimetric Register) participants in the liquidation of the consequences of this accident, having received a dose of more than 10 rem, were observed for many years and underwent periodic examination and treatment. It was recognized that the long-term effects of radiation could provoke the death of another five thousand people.

Under the influence of radiation, the thyroid gland first of all suffered, and oncological diseases of various organs and systems developed. Received confirmation of the teratogenic effect of radiation on the fetus: in humans and animals, and even in relatively prosperous Europe.

According to Greenpeace and Doctors Against nuclear war»liquidators could have died much more - tens of thousands. And in Europe itself, they associated the birth of ten thousand children with deformities and the discovery of oncology in the thyroid gland in the same number of patients with the consequences of the accident.

And no one had any doubts: the atom is not at all peaceful. For mankind, the combination of the words "NPP" and "Chernobyl" has become a symbol of trouble.

Any event in the world consists of so many factors that we can safely say that the whole universe takes part in it in one way or another. The human ability to perceive and comprehend reality ... well, what can we say about it? It is possible that we have already almost overtaken some plants in terms of success in this area. While we are just living, you can not pay much attention to what is actually happening around you. Sounds of different volumes are heard on the street, more or less cars seem to be driving in different directions, either a mosquito flew past the nose, or the remnants of yesterday's hallucination, and around the corner they hurriedly bring an elephant, which you did not even notice.

Workers of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. 1984

But we are calm. We know that there are Rules. The multiplication table, hygienic norms, the Military Regulations, the Criminal Code and Euclidean geometry - all that helps us to believe in the regularity, orderliness and, most importantly, the predictability of what is happening. How was it with Lewis Carroll - "If you hold a red-hot poker in your hands for a very long time, then in the end you can get slightly burned"?

Troubles begin when disasters occur. Whatever order they may be, they almost always remain inexplicable and incomprehensible. Why did the sole of this still completely new left sandal fall off, while the right one is full of strength and health? Why, out of a thousand cars that drove through a frozen puddle that day, only one flew into a ditch? Why on April 26, 1986, during a completely planned procedure at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, everything began to develop in a completely different way than usual, not in the way described by the regulations and as common sense suggests? However, let's give the floor to a direct participant in the events.

What's happened?

Anatoly Dyatlov

“On April 26, 1986, at one hour twenty-three minutes forty seconds, Alexander Akimov, the shift supervisor of Chernobyl Unit 4, ordered the reactor to be shut down at the end of the work carried out before the shutdown of the power unit for the planned repairs. The reactor operator Leonid Toptunov removed the cap from the AZ button, which prevents accidental erroneous pressing, and pressed the button. At this signal, 187 control rods of the reactor began to move down into the core. The backlight lamps on the mnemonic panel lit up, and the arrows of the rod position indicators began to move. Alexander Akimov, standing half-turned to the reactor control panel, watched this, he also saw that the “bunnies” of the AR imbalance indicators rushed to the left, as it should be, which meant a decrease in the reactor power, turned to the safety panel, which he was observing from the ongoing experiment.

But then something happened that even the most unbridled fantasy could not predict. After a slight decrease, the reactor power suddenly began to increase at an ever-increasing rate, alarms appeared. L. Toptunov shouted about an emergency increase in power. But there was nothing he could do. He did everything he could - he held the AZ button, the CPS rods went into the active zone. There are no other resources at his disposal. Yes, and everyone else too. A. Akimov sharply shouted: "Turn off the reactor!" He jumped to the console and de-energized the electromagnetic clutches of the CPS rod drives. The action is correct, but useless. After all, the CPS logic, that is, all its elements of logical circuits, worked correctly, the rods went into the zone. Now it is clear: after pressing the AZ button, there were no correct actions, there were no means of salvation ... Two powerful explosions followed with a short interval. The AZ rods stopped moving before going half way. They had nowhere else to go. In one hour, twenty-three minutes, forty-seven seconds, the reactor was destroyed by a power boost on prompt neutrons. This is a collapse, the ultimate catastrophe that can happen in a power reactor. They didn’t comprehend it, they didn’t prepare for it.”

This is an excerpt from Anatoly Dyatlov's book Chernobyl. How it was". The author is the deputy chief engineer of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant for operation, who was present that day at the fourth unit, who became one of the liquidators, recognized as one of the perpetrators of the tragedy and sentenced to ten years in prison, from where he was released two years later to die from radiation, where he and managed to write his memoirs before he died in 1995.

If someone taught physics very badly at school and vaguely imagines what is happening inside the reactor, he probably did not understand what was described above. In principle, this can be conditionally explained in this way.

Imagine that we have tea in a glass, which is trying to boil non-stop on its own. Well, here's the tea. So that he does not smash the glass to smithereens and fill the kitchen with hot steam, we regularly lower metal spoons into the glass - in order to cool it down. The colder we need tea, the more spoons we shove. And vice versa: to make the tea hotter, we pull out the spoons. Of course, the carbide-boron and graphite rods that are placed in the reactor work according to a slightly different principle, but the essence of this does not change much.

Now let's remember what is the main problem facing all power plants in the world. Most of all, power engineers have no trouble with fuel prices, not with drinking electricians, and not with crowds of “greens” picketing their checkpoints. The biggest trouble in the life of any power engineer is the uneven power consumption by the station's customers. The unpleasant habit of mankind to work during the day, sleep at night, and even wash in chorus, shave and watch TV shows leads to the fact that the energy produced and consumed, instead of flowing in a smooth uniform stream, is forced to jump like a mad goat, which causes blackouts and other troubles. After all, instability in the operation of any system leads to failures, and getting rid of excess energy is harder than producing it. This is especially difficult at nuclear power plants, since it is rather difficult to explain a chain reaction when it should be more active, and when it can be slowed down.

Engineers at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. 1980

In the early 1980s, the USSR began to slowly explore the possibility of rapidly increasing and decreasing the power of reactors. This method of controlling energy loads was, in theory, much simpler and more profitable than all the others.

This program, of course, was not discussed openly, the station personnel could only guess why these “scheduled repairs” became so frequent and the regulations for working with reactors changed. But, on the other hand, they didn’t do anything so extraordinarily vile with the reactors. And if this world was regulated only by the laws of physics and logic, then the fourth power unit would still behave like an angel and regularly serve the peaceful atom.

For so far, no one has been able to properly answer the main question of the Chernobyl disaster: why did the reactor power not fall after the introduction of the rods at that time, but, on the contrary, inexplicably increased sharply?

The two most authoritative bodies - the USSR Gosatomnadzor Commission and the IAEA Special Committee, after several years of work, gave birth to documents, each of which is crammed with facts about how the accident proceeded, but one cannot find an answer to the question “why?” on a single page in these detailed studies. There you can find wishes, regrets, fears, indications of shortcomings and forecasts for the future, but there is no clear explanation for what happened. By and large, both of these reports could be reduced to the phrase "Someone boomed there"*.

* Note Phacochoerus "a Funtik: « No, well, that's slander! The IAEA staff, however, expressed themselves more cultured. In fact, they wrote: “It is not known for certain how the power surge began, which led to the destruction of the reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. »

Less official researchers, on the contrary, put forward their versions with might and main - one more beautiful and more convincing than the other. And if there were not so many of them, one of them would probably be worth believing.

Various institutions, organizations and simply world-famous scientists in turn declared the perpetrators of the incident:

incorrect design of the rods; incorrect design of the reactor itself;
the error of personnel who reduced the power of the reactor for too long; a local unnoticed earthquake that occurred exactly under the Chernobyl nuclear power plant; fireball; still unknown to science particle, which sometimes occurs in a chain reaction.

The alphabet is not enough to list all the authoritative versions (non-authoritative ones, of course, as always, look more beautiful and contain such wonderful things as evil Martians, cunning cereushniks and an angry Jehovah. It is a pity that such a respected scientific publication as MAXIM cannot go on about the low tastes of the crowd and with gusto to describe all this in more detail.

These strange methods of dealing with radiation

The list of items that are usually required to be distributed to the public in the event of a radiation hazard seems incomplete to the uninitiated. And where is the button accordion, boa and net? But in fact, the things on this list are not so useless.

Mask Someone seriously believes that gamma rays, instantly penetrating steel, will save in front of five layers of gauze? Gamma rays are not. But radioactive dust, on which the heaviest, but no less dangerous substances have already settled, will enter the respiratory tract less intensively.

Iodine The isotope of iodine - one of the shortest living elements of a radioactive release - has the unpleasant property of settling in the thyroid gland for a long time and making it completely unusable. Tablets with iodine are recommended to be taken so that your thyroid gland of this iodine is filled up and it no longer grabs it from the air. True, an overdose of iodine is a dangerous thing in itself, so it is not recommended to swallow it in vials.

canned food Milk and vegetables would be the most useful foods when exposed to radiation, but alas, they are the first to become infected. And then comes the meat, which ate vegetables and gave milk. So it is better not to collect pasture in the infected region. Especially mushrooms: they contain a concentration of radioactive chemical elements uppermost.

liquidation

Recording of rescue dispatchers' conversations immediately after the disaster:

The explosion itself claimed the lives of two people: one died immediately, the second was taken to the hospital. Firefighters were the first to arrive at the scene of the disaster and set to work - extinguishing the fire. They extinguished it in canvas overalls and helmets. They had no other means of protection, and they did not know about the radiation threat - only after a couple of hours information began to spread that this fire was somehow different from the usual one.

By morning, firefighters put out the flames and began to faint - radiation damage began to affect. 136 employees and rescuers who found themselves at the station that day received a huge dose of radiation, and one in four died in the first months after the accident.

In the next three years, a total of about half a million people were involved in the liquidation of the consequences of the explosion (almost half of them were conscripts, many of whom were sent to Chernobyl, in fact, by force). The very site of the disaster was covered with a mixture of lead, boron and dolomites, after which a concrete sarcophagus was erected over the reactor. Nevertheless, the amount of radioactive substances released into the air immediately after the accident and in the first weeks after it was enormous. Neither before nor after have such numbers been found in densely populated areas.

The deafening silence of the Soviet authorities about the accident did not then seem as strange as it is now. Hiding bad or exciting news from the population was so common practice at that time that even information about a sex maniac operating in the area could not reach the ears of a serene public for years; and only when the next "Fischer" or "Mosgaz" began to count their victims by tens, or even hundreds, the district police officers were given the task to quietly bring to the attention of parents and teachers the fact that it would probably be better for the kids not to run alone along the street.

Therefore, the city of Pripyat was evacuated the next day after the accident hastily, but quietly. People were told that they were being taken out for a day, a maximum of two, and they were asked not to take any things with them so as not to overload the transport. The authorities did not say a word about radiation.

Rumors, of course, spread, but the vast majority of the inhabitants of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia have never heard of any Chernobyl. Some of the members of the Central Committee of the CPSU had the conscience to raise the issue of canceling the May Day demonstrations, at least in cities located directly in the path of polluted clouds, but it was considered that such a violation of the eternal order would cause unhealthy unrest in society. So the residents of Kyiv, Minsk and other cities managed to run around with balloons and carnations under the radioactive rain.

But a radioactive release of this magnitude was impossible to hide. The Poles and Scandinavians were the first to raise the cry, to which those same magical clouds flew in from the east and brought with them a lot of interesting things.

Affected

Indirect evidence confirming that scientists gave the government the green light to keep silent about Chernobyl can be the fact that scientist Valery Legasov, a member of the government commission investigating the accident, who organized the liquidation for four months and voiced the official (very smoothed) version of what was happening to the foreign press, in 1988 hanged himself, leaving in his office a dictaphone record telling about the details of the accident, and that part of the record, which chronologically should have been a story about the reaction of the authorities to the events in the first days, was erased by unidentified persons.

Another indirect evidence of this is that scientists still radiate optimism. And now the officials of the Federal Agency for Atomic Energy stand on the fact that only those several hundred people who took part in the liquidation in the first days of the explosion, and even then with banknotes, can be considered really victims of the explosion. For example, the article “Who Helped Create the Chernobyl Myth”, written by FAAE and IBRAE RAS specialists in 2005, analyzes statistics on the health status of residents of contaminated areas and, recognizing that the population in general gets sick a little more often, sees the reason only in the fact that, succumbing to alarmist moods, people, firstly, run to the doctors with every pimple, and secondly, for many years they have been living in unhealthy stress caused by hysteria in the yellow press. They explain the huge number of disabled people among the liquidators of the first wave by the fact that “it is beneficial to be disabled”, and they hint that the main cause of catastrophic mortality among the liquidators is not the consequences of irradiation, but alcoholism, caused by the same irrational fear of radiation. Even the phrase "radiation danger" is written by our peaceful nuclear scientists exclusively in quotation marks.

But this is one side of the coin. For every nuclear worker who is convinced that there is no cleaner and safer energy in the world than atomic energy, there is a member of an environmental or human rights organization who is ready to sow that same panic in generous handfuls.

Greenpeace, for example, estimates the number of victims Chernobyl accident 10 million, adding to them, however, representatives of the next generations who will fall ill or be born sick within the next 50 years.

Between these two poles there are dozens and hundreds of international organizations, statistical studies which contradict each other so much that in 2003 the IAEA was forced to create the Chernobyl Forum organization, whose task would be to analyze these statistics in order to create at least some reliable picture of what is happening.

And so far, there is nothing clear with estimates of the consequences of the disaster. The increase in mortality of the population from areas close to Chernobyl can be explained by the mass migration of young people from there. A slight "rejuvenation" of oncological diseases - by checking local residents for oncology much more intensively than in other places, so many cases of cancer are caught at very early stages. Even the state of burdocks and ladybugs in the closed zone around Chernobyl is the subject of fierce disputes. It seems like the burdocks grow amazingly juicy, and the cows are well-fed, and the number of mutations in the local flora and fauna is within the natural norm. But what is the harmlessness of radiation here, and what is the beneficial effect of the absence of people for many kilometers around, it is difficult to answer.

The Chernobyl nuclear power plant is known for its catastrophe. At that time, 13 thousand people lived in the city. The history of the disaster is sad in that due to high level radiation had to leave almost everyone. Now less than a thousand people live there, because at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant there was a catastrophe, which is one of the most tragic and large-scale in the world. The Chernobyl disaster happened on April 26, 1986.

Chernobyl. Chronology of events

On April 26, 1986, the Chernobyl disaster in the history of nuclear energy became the largest. At night, this day, a turbogenerator was tested at the 4th power unit of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. They planned to stop the reactor in order to measure the generator indicator. But it was not possible to safely drown it out and at 1.23 Moscow time there was an explosion and a fire. The chronology of events is very large-scale, because it all began with the accumulation of errors. After the explosion, the release of radioactive materials into the environment was very huge.

Only one was killed in the explosion. man - Valery Khodemchuk. And in the morning it became known about the death of Vladimir Shashenok, the adjusting engineer of the automation system. April 27 was the evacuation of the inhabitants of Pripyat. In the following days, the evacuation of the nearest population. The Chernobyl chronology of events contains a lot of measures aimed at eliminating it.

Chernobyl. Chronology of events

Chernobyl. Radiation consequences

The Chernobyl area became alienated due to severe radioactive contamination. What a terrible level of radiation in Chernobyl, if he was in the top ten of the list of cities in the world, the most polluted! The radiation of the consequences was enormous due to the fire, which could not be extinguished for 10 days! And what kind of radiation is there in Chernobyl, if more than 200 thousand square meters are radioactively contaminated? km and 70% of them are on the territory of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. In Mordovia, Chuvashia and the Leningrad region fell radioactive fallout. After it became known about pollution in Sweden, Finland, Norway and the Arctic regions of the USSR.

Chernobyl. History of the disaster

Chernobyl. Who is to blame for the accident

The history of the disaster shows us that emergency protection played a very important role in this accident.

There are two versions:

1. operating personnel are guilty;
2. the design of the reactor is to blame.

Most of the commissions were inclined to believe that the cause of the accident was a gross violation of the Operation Regulations. Some of the perpetrators of the accident are: the director of the Chernobyl NPP - Bryukhanov V.P., the chief engineer of the Chernobyl NPP - Fomin N.M. and others. All of them received different terms of imprisonment.

Alert and evacuate the population

The Chernobyl evacuation of 1986 forced people to leave all their belongings, houses, households ... But, nevertheless, someone returned later. The history of the disaster is described by many people. Around 3:00 pm on April 27, the population was told by radio that they needed to collect all the necessary things, food and go outside. There were 3-4 police officers in each yard. They entered every house, every apartment and took out those who did not want to evacuate. Buses came and took people to a safe area.

Panic and provocation

The history of the Chernobyl disaster was not immediately revealed to people. Some only heard that something happened at the station, because there was an order: "Do not sow panic." At first, it was believed that the scale of the accident that had occurred was not as great as it seemed, and that if a fire was not visible, it meant nothing serious. And then everything became more obvious. The task was to secure information about the disaster, but some documents were stolen. There were loudspeakers in the streets. They announced that people would soon return home. There was a lot of pressure on the buses. Panic broke out in the city. All the authorities left Pripyat first. And if it were not for the heroism of several liquidators, the consequences would have been much more horrifying ...

Chernobyl. Accident liquidation

The consequences of the Chernobyl disaster, which occurred on April 26, 1986, are still being eliminated. The first liquidation of the accident in Chernobyl was taken up by firefighters. In the morning, when the accident occurred, 240 people from the personnel of the Kyiv Regional Fire Department put out the fire. After the accident, work at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant was stopped. In May 1986, after the accident, 10 thousand people were involved to eliminate the consequences. At the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, a sarcophagus was built, inside which at least 95% of irradiated nuclear fuel, incl. about 180 tons of uranium-235, as well as about 70 thousand tons of radioactive metal, glass, concrete, dust ... Now, on top of this sarcophagus, they are building another one, because The first one has already expired.

Conclusion: at the moment there are operating enterprises in the city that maintain hazardous areas in a safe, ecological state. The 30-kilometer zone is protected and controlled from outside penetration by the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine.

In 2011, the complex was opened in honor of the 25th anniversary of the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. There is a museum in this complex, which contains the things of the evacuated people: plates with numbers and streets of houses, household items, toys, and so on.

Additional Information

On May 1, 1986, just days after the accident, the Soviet authorities at Chernobyl realized that the reactor was still melting. 185 tons of nuclear fuel was in the core, and the reaction continued at a tremendous speed.

Five million gallons of water were under this nuclear material. Water was the coolant, a thick concrete slab separated the melted reactor from the water. The plate burned through and went down to the water.

A radiation-contaminated steam explosion could happen if the melted reactor touched water. Most of Europe would be infected. The death toll would be appallingly high.
One journalist wrote that if a nuclear explosion caused fuel to evaporate in other reactors, then 200 square kilometers of land would be unusable, Kiev would be destroyed, the water supply system used by 30 million inhabitants would be polluted, and for more than a hundred years northern Ukraine would be would be unsuitable.

A more grim assessment was later made that if the melting reactor had reached the water, an explosion would have occurred that would destroy half of Europe and make it, as well as Ukraine and part of Russia, uninhabitable for a very long time.

The melting core burned through the concrete slab more and more, which quickly approached the water.A plan was developed to prevent possible explosions of other reactors. It was decided that three people in scuba gear would go through the flooded chambers of the fourth reactor to find a pair of shut-off valves and open them so that the water that had not yet come into contact with the reactor completely drained out.

It was a great plan for millions of people in the USSR and Europeans, because they were waiting for the inevitable death, illness and other damage due to the explosion.

Everyone understood that diving divers into a tank of water would greatly shorten their lives.If there was a second explosion, then there would be inevitable death from radiation poisoning.A senior engineer, a mid-level engineer, and a shift supervisor volunteered to save the situation. These three people knew that after their feat they would live very, very little.The shift supervisor had to hold the underwater lamp so that the engineers could find the valves that needed to be opened.

The next day, the brave trio plunged into the darkness of the pool. The light of the lantern was periodically extinguished and was very dim. They moved in the murky darkness and tried to complete this dangerous operation as quickly as possible, because the isotopes quickly and freely destroyed their bodies. But they could not find the necessary drain valves, and knowing that the light of the lantern could go out at any moment, they continued to search anyway.

The last beam of light from the lantern illuminated the pipe leading to the valves. Flashlight burned out. Divers were able to swim up to the pipe in complete darkness, intercepting it with their hands and rising up. It was dark and defenseless from the strongest ionization. But in the darkness there were valves so necessary to save millions of people.

Divers were able to open them. The water quickly rushed out. The pool started to empty. The men who returned to the surface were greeted as heroes. They became them. The second explosion did not happen, despite the fact that the melting core sank to the tank. On time, the next day, five million gallons of radioactive water leaked out from under the reactor.

Millions of people were saved thanks to the Chernobyl trio who plunged into the pool and drained it. There could be a steam explosion that significantly changed the course of history. Three heroes, Alexei Ananenko, Valery Bespalov and Boris Baranov, had radiation sickness progressing very strongly, and after a few weeks they died. Their bodies were thoroughly saturated with radioactive radiation. All three were buried in lead coffins with sealed lids.

For some, when saving someone's life, there is at least a small, but chance in order to stay alive. These men knew that they had no chance of living any longer. Three saved millions of people.

- Learn the price of lies

Chronicle of one of the worst man-made disasters in history. The mini-series recreates the events immediately after the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, telling about the sacrifices made to save from an immeasurable tragedy. British actor Jared Harris plays the role of a Soviet nuclear physicist who was one of the first to realize the scale of the catastrophe. Stellan Skarsgard played Boris Shcherbina, deputy head of the USSR Council of Ministers, who was appointed by the Kremlin to lead a government commission to eliminate the consequences of the accident. Oscar nominee Emily Watson plays the fictional physicist Ulana Khomyuk, who decides to reveal true reason accidents.