Chernobyl notebook. Part of 5

16


6 May 1986 years



Press conference B. E. Scherbyna. In his speech, the radiation background around the emergency unit and in Pripyat was lowered. What for?

The chairman of the USSR State Atomic Energy Committee, A. M. Petrosyants, uttered monstrous words, justifying the Chernobyl disaster:

"Science requires sacrifice." I thought, very cleverly said, but it turned out stupid and blasphemous. People are dying ...

Marshal S. Kh. Aganov fired with shaped charges on the emergency unit. The charge was attached to the wall of the SROWS (auxiliary systems of the reactor compartment) from the third block, the fuse of the fuse was set on fire. Punched a hole in the walls of three rooms. But on the way were the pipelines and equipment that prevented to stretch the pipeline. It was necessary to greatly expand the hole. Did not dare ...

V. T. Kizima proposed another solution; do not shoot, but burn with a welding arc from the side of the transport corridor. There is such a 009 room there. Began preparation for work ...

To reduce the burning of graphite and uranium hexafluoride and block the access of oxygen to the core, we connected nitrogen to the recipients and fed it under the foundation cross of the apparatus ...

Activity in Kiev (air) amounted to about two thousand doses on the first and second of May. Reported arrived installer. Data requires verification ...

7 May 1986 years

The headquarters of the USSR Ministry of Energy in Moscow was organized to provide prompt and long-term assistance to Chernobyl. Duty of HF to 22.00 in the office of First Deputy Minister S. I. Sadovsky.

Meeting at the Deputy Minister A.N. Semenov, He offered him the embankment of the emergency unit with the help of a directional explosion. Reviewed the issue with specialists Glavgidrospetsstroy. Found impossible. In the soils of Pripyat there is mainly sand, which cannot be directed to an explosion. Heavy soils are needed, but they are not there. The sand just blows apart in all directions. It's a pity! I would put nuclear power plants on heavy soils, so that later, if necessary, flood them with earth, turning them into something like a Scythian burial mound. A single human life is more precious than the most unique unit.

The first radio-controlled bulldozers arrived in Chernobyl: the Japanese KAMATSU and our DT-250. There is a big difference in their maintenance. Our plant is manually operated and remotely controlled. In the event that the motor stalls in the work zone, where high radiation, it is necessary to send a person to start again. Japanese "KAMATSU" starts and is controlled remotely.

From Vyshgorod, where the equipment for Chernobyl is concentrated, the dispatcher called. He said that already a huge number of cars arrived. A lot of drivers. Out of control. It is difficult with the organization of housing and food. Everywhere they drink. They say for decontamination. Activity in Kiev and Vyshgorod: air - 0,5 millirentgen per hour, on the surface of roads and asphalt - 15 — 20 millirentgen per hour.

He ordered the dispatcher: split the drivers into dozens and put each of the most conscious at the head. Ineligible to be sent home. Continue to take people, based on the need to have a continuous reserve for the replacement of outgoing (received a dose of 25 rem).

In Chernobyl, air activity increases dramatically at times. Plutonium, transuranium and others. In these cases - urgent relocation of staffs and dormitories to a new, more distant place. At the same time leave bed linen, furniture and other things. In the new place they will equip everything anew ...

When the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR NI Ryzhkov came to the disaster zone, people, in particular, complained about his poor medical care. The Prime Minister smashed to pieces the Minister of Health of the RSFSR S. P. Burenkov and his deputies ...


Unfortunately, it turned out that in our country there is no necessary special equipment for the elimination and localization of nuclear disasters, like the Chernobyl disaster. Such as “wall in soil” machines with sufficient trench depth, robotics with manipulators, etc. ...

Deputy Minister A. N. Semenov returned from a meeting with the Deputy Minister of Defense, Marshal S. F. Akhromeyev. He told: a representative meeting, about thirty colonel-generals and general-lieutenants. He was the head of the chemical troops V. K. Pikalov. Marshal scolded the crowd that the army was not ready for decontamination. There is no necessary equipment and chemicals ...

Of course, no one was ready for the Chernobyl nuclear phenomenon. For thirty-five years, academicians assured everyone that nuclear power plants are safer than even a Tula samovar. Life has shown how important the correct theoretical prerequisites are in assessing the development of scientific and technological revolution in general, and nuclear energy in particular. Well, of course - the truth ...


Radiation situation on 7 in the disaster area in May (taken by the Ministry of Energy headquarters from Chernobyl for HF):

- around and around nuclear power plants: graphite (close) - 2000 X-ray per hour. Fuel - up to 15 thousand X-rays per hour. In general, the radiation background around the block is 1200 X-rays per hour (from the dam side).

- Pripyat - 0,5 — 1,0 X-ray per hour (air). Roads, asphalt - from 10 to 60 X-rays per hour.

- The roof of the XTI and XML - 400 X-ray per hour.

- Chernobyl - 15 millirentgen per hour (air), earth - up to 20 x-ray per hour.

- Ivankov (60 kilometers from Chernobyl) - 5 millirentgen per hour ...


A call from Chernobyl from the head of the construction site V. T. Kizima. Complains of the lack of passenger transport. Drivers with cars, "Muscovites", "Oise", "Volga", "Rafiki", who arrived from different construction sites, having chosen the dose, leave without permission on their own radioactive transport. Wash machine fails. Activity in the cabin reaches 3 — 5 X-rays per hour. Requests dosimeters: drives and optical. Acute shortage. Dosimeters steal. Those who leave are taken away as souvenirs. The most painful place is the organization of the dosimetry service of builders and installers. Exploitation is demoralized, and does not provide for itself ...


I contacted the Civil Defense Headquarters of the country by phone, received approval for two thousand sets of optical dosimeters with power supply and charging units from the Kiev base. Transferred the coordinates of Kizime. I asked him to send the car ...


The headquarters of the USSR Ministry of Energy are calling, many Soviet citizens come, asking to be sent to Chernobyl to participate in the aftermath of the disaster. Most, of course, does not represent what nature the work awaits them. But radiation for some reason does not bother anyone. They say: after all, at the rate of 25 X-rays ... Others directly declare: we want to earn. They learned that in the zone adjacent to the emergency unit, they pay five salaries ...

But for the most part, help is offered disinterestedly. One demobilized soldier from Afghanistan said. “So what, what's dangerous? In Afghanistan, too, was not a walk. I want to help the country. ”

Prepared a draft Government Decree on Chernobyl: “On measures to eliminate the consequences of the accident” (provision of equipment, vehicles, chemicals for decontamination, benefits for builders and installers). Minister A.I. Mayorets will report today at a meeting of the Politburo ...

20.00. It was decided to supply liquid concrete mortar to the concrete in order to concrete the pieces of fuel and graphite and thereby reduce the radiation background. 60 welders are urgently needed to install the concrete solution supply pipeline. Order Deputy Minister A. N. Semenov, Chief of Soyusenergomontazh P. P. Triandafilidi: “Distinguish people!”

Triandafilidi passionately shouts to Semenov:

- We will burn welders radiation! Who will install pipelines at nuclear power plants under construction ?!

A new order was followed by Semenov Triandafilidi:

"Prepare a list of welders and installers and transfer to the Ministry of Defense for mobilization."

In connection with the expected heavy rains in the area of ​​the Chernobyl NPP - the order of the Chairman of the Government Commission I. S. Silayev:

“Immediately start re-installing the storm sewage system of the city of Pripyat on the reservoir of the cooling pond” (previously it was in the Pripyat River).

“The whole headquarters of the Government Commission will go to the emergency unit to organize urgent measures to close the active pieces of graphite and fuel ejected by the explosion” ...

I will tell about works in this direction later.

There were still many months ahead of intense and dangerous work in conditions of tough radiation fields. And tens of thousands of people who do not understand radiation in people will work in these fields ...

8 May 1986 years

At ten in the morning of May 8, I received an order from E. A. Reshetnikov - an 15-hour flight from the “Bykovo” airport to fly to Kiev, and then to Chernobyl.

The task was concise: to understand the situation, assess the situation, report back.

When signing the trip, Deputy Minister Alexander Nikolaevich Semenov told me:

- Decide, please, with the radiation fields. When we were there, no one really knew how much it shines, but now they hide it, they lie. Decide, please ... And anyway ... If you come, enlighten me, illiterate, about the danger of radiation. And then here I am sitting clipped under the typewriter ... And the pressure is rushing up ... Is it from the atom? ..

They flew out of the "Bykovo" about sixteen hours. We've been waiting for the minister for a long time. He arrived late for an hour, accompanied by his assistant for the regime, whom he took to work at the Ministry of Energy of the USSR from the Ministry of Electrical Engineering and Industry, where he had previously worked as a minister.

In addition to me, three more deputy heads of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Energy of the USSR flew: I. S. Popel — deputy head of Glavsnab, Yu. A. Khiesalu — deputy head of GlavEnergokokomplekt, and V. S. Mikhailov — deputy head of Soyuzatomenergostroya — weak and somewhat silly, with commanding habits, but with very tenacious and attentive, studying eyes. He was all like mercury, a typical choleric person; he could not sit quietly in one place for a minute. Be sure to get out with some thoughts, initiatives, sometimes devoid of common sense. In a word, a smart, cunning deputy head of the Main Board for Personnel and Personnel.

Ülo Ainović Hiesalu is calm, quiet, he doesn’t say too much, but when he says, he has a strong Estonian accent. But a supremely handsome and decent person.

Igor Sergeevich Popel is an energetic broad-faced supplier of a cheerful disposition.

All three for the first time in their lives went to the zone of high radiation. And naturally, it was their great excitement and encouraging them in advance. All the way to Chernobyl, they braked me, an infinite number of times asking about the same thing: what is radiation, what it consists of and what it is eaten with, how to defend, how much can and how much X-rays cannot be missed?

The special flight was carried out on a Yak-40 aircraft leased by the USSR Ministry of Energy and specially adapted to transport the authorities. The fuselage had two small salons: the bow, in which the higher authorities were located, and the tail cabin, where all the rest were located. True, this subordination was observed mainly in the pre-Chernobyl era. The catastrophe drastically democratized the situation on special flights ...

In the nose cabin, on the left side, the minister and his assistant on the regime sat in chairs at a small table against each other.

On the starboard side - one after another, four pairs of chairs, in which the deputy heads of the Glavkov, the heads of the production departments and services of the various departments of the Ministry sat down.

Of all those flying on this flight, I alone worked for a long time on the operation of nuclear power plants — the Minister, although he had already spent the first nuclear week in Pripyat and Chernobyl, was irradiated and was now shaved under the typewriter, did not fully understand what had happened, he perceived the events superficially and was not capable of making any serious independent decision on a complex of problems that had arisen without the help of specialists.

All rounded, well-fed, even greasy, with a sleek puffy face, he sat now silently, never spoke to any of his subordinates in the cabin. On his face wandered a faint smile.

I quietly examined him, and it seemed to me that he was amazed at the accomplished, this nuclear catastrophe that had suddenly fallen on him. And it was as if it was written on his face: “And why did I come to this unknown to me power engineering, took upon my shoulders the construction and operation of nuclear power plants, in which I don’t understand anything? Why did he leave his native electric motors and transformers? What for?.."

Perhaps the minister was not thinking about that, but he was clearly amazed by this nuclear “bread” that came over him. Amazed, but not scared. He could not get scared, for he did not understand that a nuclear catastrophe was dangerous. Moreover, he did not agree that a catastrophe occurred. Just an accident ... a small breakdown ...

Kafanov, a deputy head of Soyuzgidrospetsstroy, was also flying with us, a tall, gloomy-looking man with a puffy gray face. Outwardly, he looked Olympic calm. However, he also had to face radiation for the first time.

I was sitting in the front row of seats, by the window. Below, the Dnieper was widely spread. After all, only recently ended the flood. Well, that ended. Otherwise, if a disaster had happened a month ago, all the radioactivity that had fallen on the ground would have been in Pripyat and the Dnieper ...

Behind me, Mikhailov was grumbling. He was worried about the unknown future, he wanted to find out everything in advance and asked in a whisper, apparently embarrassing the minister:

- Tell me, Grigory Ustinovich, how much can you grab, so that well ... without a trace? .. Well, nothing happened? ..

“Take your time,” I said, insulting him, also in a whisper, “We’re already going down.” On the ground, I will tell ...

Worried and Popel. There was a clear, beautiful voice from behind.

- I have pressure. I heard, from the rays it jumps with terrible force. Why do I need this? ..

Kafanov and Yulo Ainovich Hiyesalu were silent. I did not hear their voices. Occasionally I only glanced at the minister, whose mannequin smiling face had not changed his expression during the entire flight. Gray, empty, with a tinge of astonishment, his eyes looked into a narrow space in front of him, looking at something unknown to us.

They flew to Kiev at six o'clock in the evening. Landing will be at the airport "Zhulyany". Low flying over Kiev. The streets are unusually deserted for the rush hour. Rare passersby. Where are the people? I often flew to Kiev from this side before, I have been in it when I worked at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, but this was never the case. My soul felt sad.

Finally landed. The Minister immediately abandoned us all and drove off at the ZIL. He was met as pale as death by the Minister of Energy of Ukraine V. F. Sklyarov and the secretary of the Kiev Regional Committee. But we, mere mortals, were met by the chief of Glavsnab of the Ministry of Energy of the Ukrainian SSR, G.P. Maslak, thin, affable, cheerful, bald.

Our entire team, led by Maslak, sat down in the blue "Rafik". Mikhailov and Popel immediately, as they say, attacked Maslak with questions. After all, Maslak was a man from a new, now nuclear land, just think! I want to pinch myself, from the Ukrainian nuclear land ...

Maslak said that the air activity in Kiev, as it is transmitted by radio, is 0,34 millirategen per hour, which is much more on the asphalt, but they don’t tell about it, how many exactly, he doesn’t know, but he heard that there are a hundred times more. What this means, he also does not know, because he had never dealt with an atom before in his life. He also said that in a week after the explosion, about one million people left Kiev. In the first days at the railway station it was unimaginable, there were more people than in the days of evacuation during the Patriotic War. The price of tickets for speculators inflated up to two hundred rubles, despite the additional train-dedicated for departing. Carriages at landing were taken with a fight, left on roofs, on footboards. But such a panic lasted no more than three or four days. Now you can already leave Kiev freely. It began, he says, all from the fact that high-ranking workers began to smuggle out their children from Kiev. It was discovered simply: classes in schools began to thin out ...

It is difficult now in the factories. It is not possible at other productions not to organize a three-shift two-shift one. But those who remained, while their absolute majority, show a high spirit and responsibility.

- But what is it - 0,34 milli-momentum per hour ?! Damn me! - exclaimed impatient. strongly hook-nosed, with a graying Kurchatov beard V.S. Mikhailov, - Tell, Grigory Ustinovich.

—- Tell, tell! - they all cried out in chorus, including the resident of Kiev, Maslak.

What can you do, I had to tell them what I knew.

- The maximum permissible dose for atomic operators is five roentgens per year. For the rest of the population - ten times less, that is - 0,5 X-rays per year or 500 milli-ray. Divide the 365 days in a year and get that a mere mortal has the right to "grab" 1,3 milliratgen per day. This dose is specified by the WHO (World Health Organization). Now, that is, on the eighth of May, in Kiev, if you believe the official data, 0,34 millirentgen per hour, or 8,16 milliratgen per day, —6 times the WHO norm. On the pavement, according to Maslak, the daily dose is 300 times the WHO standard ...

“Rafik” was still driving along the semi-desert streets of Kiev. The time is seven o'clock.

—— They say, ”said Maslak,“ in the first three days after the explosion, activity in Kiev reached 100 milli-gen per hour.

“That means,” I explained, “that the total dose per day was 2,4 X-rays, or about two thousand doses against the WHO standard for mere mortals ...”

- Well, you know! The expansive Mikhailov exclaimed. And suddenly he cried: - Maslak! Where are your dosimeters? You are Glavsnab, give us dosimeters!

- Dosimeters will receive in Ivankov, there is already in store for you.

- Stop, stop! - began to slacken the Mikhailov driver - right here, near the wine shop. We must take the water for decontamination. Irradiate the gonads - and nothing more is needed. What a life without gonads?

The driver smiled, but did not stop. Over the past ten days, he was convinced that he had not died, that he could still live.

- No, naturally! - exclaimed Popel. - This mess. My pressure has already jumped. Head on temechke ache.

“And you pee on temechko, it helps,” Mikhailov advised.

“No, except for the jokes,” continued Popel. - Why am I there, not understanding anything? I will come, I will come to Sadovsky and I will say: - Do you need me, Stanislav Ivanovich? And if he says “no,” I will immediately go back ... You do not leave, wait until we find out, ”he had already addressed to the driver.

He nodded affirmatively.

“I will also ask Sadovsky,” said Yulo Ainovich Hiesalu.

- Sadovsky is a layman himself in the atomic business. He is a hydraulic engineer, - Mikhailov specified.

“He is first and foremost the first deputy minister,” said Popel.

I glanced out the window, looking at the passersby, the faces of most of whom were anxious, sad, depressed.

We passed the Shevchenko Square, an intercity station, from which I often returned from the trip by bus to Pripyat in the seventies, and left for the city limits of Kiev.

I looked at the mast pine forest from the sides, knowing that now there is also (to think painfully) radioactive dirt, although outwardly everything is as clean and tidy. And there are noticeably fewer people around, and people seem sadder, somehow lonely. And there are very few cars oncoming from the Chernobyl area ...

Here passed Petrivtsy, Dymer. Villas, villages oboch road. Rare passersby. Children with backpacks go from school after the second shift. And they all seem to be the same, but as it were, others ...

And earlier - the people were full, lively movement, life was in full swing. And now everything seemed to slow down. Thinned and slowed. And in my heart sadness and involuntary guilt feelings. All of us, nuclear energy, are guilty before these innocent people, before the whole world. And I am guilty. And those few of my colleagues who are well represented a real threat of nuclear power plants for the population and the surrounding nature. So, we did not show, understanding, due perseverance, to bring this danger to the minds of people. Unable to break through the shaft of official propaganda about the alleged complete safety of nuclear power plants. Such an involuntary feeling filled the soul. And again thoughts about Chernobyl, about Bryukhanov, about all this past 15 anniversary of nuclear energy on the Ukrainian land, about the reasons that led to the explosion ...

What I described in previous chapters about the events of 26 and 27 of April came to me later, after visiting Chernobyl and Pripyat, a meticulous survey of many people, Bryukhanov, shop managers and shifts of nuclear power plants, participants of those tragic events. He helped me to understand the tangled situation and reconstruct the whole course of events and my experience of many years of work on the operation of nuclear power plants, experienced exposure and hospital stay at the 6 hospital in Moscow in the seventies. After all, no one knew the full picture. Each of the eyewitnesses or participants in the events knew only his own little piece of tragedy. I am obliged to give a complete and true picture, as far as possible. Only the complete truth about the largest nuclear catastrophe on the planet Earth can help people to think deeply about what has happened, to learn the lessons and gain a new, higher level of understanding and responsibility. And this applies not only to a narrow circle of specialists, but to all people without exception. In all countries of the world ...

In the meantime ... While we were driving in the direction of Chernobyl, having at our disposal a small stock of fairly general information about the incident, which I received from April 28 to May 8, while in Moscow ...

"Rafik" ran along the wide and completely empty highway "Kiev - Chernobyl", ten days ago, busy and radiant with lights of cars. 20.30 evenings. Ivankov is about twenty kilometers away. Comrades traveling with me have already discussed everything about radiation and its effects on the body, tired and anxiously silenced. Sometimes only Mikhailov or Popel said with a sigh:

- Yes, brothers ... That's it ... - and again fell silent. .— Overalls in Ivankov have? - I asked the accompanying us Maslak.

- Must be. I called there.

- Where will the minister spend the night?

- Also in Ivankovo. They took a house there from the hostess. Shasharin is also in the apartment. All the dormitories and living space of the power networks in Ivankov are crowded. The workers were evacuated from Chernobyl the other day. Has jumped sharply activity.

“We should break through today at Chernobyl headquarters,” I said. - Ivankov is still an hour away, taking into account changing clothes and dinner, one and a half. We would have to catch an evening meeting of the headquarters of the Government Commission ...

“We'll see,” answered Maslak vaguely.

Only at nine in the evening our “Rafik” drove into the courtyard of the Ivankov power networks. They went out, stretched their legs. In a small wooden barrack, right there in the yard, we had a quick snack. There was a small canteen for the operating personnel of the power grids.

Maslak ran to find out where the overalls were, where to settle us for the night.

They waited about thirty minutes. In the courtyard nearby, three workers who had recently arrived from Chernobyl excitedly talked with each other. One was in white cotton, two were in blue overalls with dosimeters in breast pockets. They now and then, especially one - in white, tall, bald, - pointed the cap off from the head to the north-west, into the tall, already evening, overcast sky and shouted:

“It's roasting today — two thousand doses of plutonium, strangling,” he frowned, coughed, wiped his wrinkled face with his cap.

“And I have pruritus,” said another, “my whole body is itchy, like an allergy ...”

“Especially the ankle feet,” said the third, and, pulling up the legs of the jumpsuit and bending down, began frantically scratching his crimson swollen legs with his nails.

We also began to look in that direction. The sky was ominous and silent. And we all looked, looked there with such a feeling that there was a war, a front.

“Here, in the courtyard, it is now five millirentgen per hour,” said the bald one in white overalls.

In breathing slightly smarted. Mikhailov was worried:

- Have you heard? Five millirentgen. I will definitely be allergic to this stuff. - And he asked me: - And how much is the daily dose for use?

- Seventeen millirentgen.

- Have you heard ?! Three hours and a daily dose! How much do we grab there?

- Everything will be ours. Do not panic.

Maslak returned and reported unpleasant news:

- There are no overalls, there are no dosimeters, there is no place to sleep. Everything is crammed to the limit. Sleep literally on each other. Beds are not enough - sleeping on the floor. We're going to spend the night in Kiev. In Chernobyl in this form can not be wrapped. These are the first days, they say, there was someone in what ... I contacted Kiev and gave the order that the bag with overalls and dosimeters be delivered to the Kyivenergo hotel. There and spend the night. Tomorrow at six in the morning, “Rafik” will drop by for you and take you to Chernobyl.

There was nothing to do. They sat in the "Rafik" and went to Kiev. They arrived at half past eleven. In the hotel "Kyivenergo" was already waiting for us a huge bag with cotton blue overalls, boots, and woolen black berets. The fact that berets are woolen is bad. Wool perfectly absorbs radioactivity. Would need cotton, but they are not. On bezrybe and cancer fish ...

While the comrades were preparing the documents, I went out into the yard. The air is the same as in Ivankov, breathing heavily. Not less, therefore, here. Somewhere between three and five millirentgen per hour. And on the radio in the lobby, they just broadcast it - 0,34 is millirategen per hour. Clearly underestimate. What for?..

In the morning - summer blue sky, 25 degrees of heat. Cheerfully settled in "Rafik" - Mikhailov, Medvedev, Popel, Hiesalu, Kafanov, Reasonable, Filonov. Let's go through Vyshgorod. Again, the same as yesterday, the picture: Kiev has become quiet, concentrated, turned into a face of rare passers-by rushing to work.

On the outskirts of Vyshgorod, a dosimetrist is at the GAI post. The same dosimetrists with radiometers on the chest and long sticks of sensors are located at traffic police posts in Petrivtsy, Dymer, and Ivankov. Stop and "sniff" wheel sensors in rare cars from the side of Chernobyl. We miss. Near the dosimetric post at the entrance to Ivankov stopped, checked the waybill, pass to the zone. It's okay At the side of the road there is a blue "Zhiguli" with doors wide open and a trunk. Inside - bales with things, carpets. The owners, a man and a woman, stand nearby confused.

- Where do things come from? - the traffic police officer asks, and the dosimetrist feels the bales with a radiometer sensor.

- From Chernobyl ... Yes, everything is clean ... - says the man

“Not really,” says the dosimetrist. - Five hundred millibers per hour ...

- Yes, what is it? - the woman wailed. - Your good and do not take ...

We move on. We had breakfast at yesterday's canteen of the Ivankov grids and, without delay, went to Chernobyl.

On both sides of the road, as far as the eye can see, there are deserted green fields. Can not see the revival in settlements, farms, towns. Either they are still sleeping, or they are abandoned. Chickens are crawling in dust, a dozen and a half sheep wander without a shepherd along the road towards Chernobyl. Vaughn boy with a knapsack goes to school. Curious, he looked at us in the car, all equally dressed in blue. Here is an old woman pulling an abutting goat. Few people. It has become sharper to burn the eyes, breathe.

“Oh, today is the evil air,” said the driver, and pulled a “pig's nose” respirator hanging around his neck, as we called foam rubber dust masks that look like a severed tip of a pig's face.

They overtook a column of mixer trucks, which were in a hurry with the dry concrete mix in Pripyat.

Thirty kilometer zone. Military patrol and dose control. Alone in respirators, others not. Shy, flaunt. Checked the waybill, pass to the zone. Everything is good. Let's go further.

Towards rushed armored personnel carrier. The driver in a respirator. Face stern, focused. Burning breath, cuts eyelids more and more. Following the driver, everyone pulled on respirators, except for me. For some reason I am ashamed. I am ashamed to beat my forehead in front of the radiation, damn her! Ahead of the asphalt road sediment dust. We went around the "Volga" with the Minister. Dust cloud with an activity of about thirty x-rays per hour enveloped "Rafik". Put on a respirator. "Volga" Minister disappeared around the bend. Again alone on the road. Occasionally we overtake a heavily crawling mixer with a load of dry concrete. And once again deaf, empty. In the vast expanses of fields, in villages and farms - not a soul. Greens are still fresh. But soon, I knew this from experience, it would begin to darken, blacken, wither and become red needles of spruce and pine. Those who gained green power will wither and, like sheep's wool, these “hairs” of the earth will accumulate radiation in themselves. There it is typed in two or three times more than on the surface of the roads.

Again and again we have to answer questions from comrades, explain what radiation is and what it is eaten with. I wanted to say that they eat it with anything now, it is everywhere, outside of us and in us, we breathe it ... But I did not say that. Explained in a scientific way, but perceived tight. The previous explanations in Kiev are almost forgotten. And no wonder. Besides me, because none of the people traveling in Rafik have ever dealt with radioactivity.

Popel complains that he has a headache.

“Pressure is flooded,” he concludes. - And why do I need this? The war has passed, so much has been experienced ... We will come, I will immediately ask Sadovsky: I need you here? .. I can do more in Moscow than in Chernobyl, a thousand times ... And a hundred times faster ...

Mikhailov, Reasonable, Kafanov now and then look into the eyepieces of their dosimeters. There, the static thread arrow indicated on the scale the number of x-rays obtained. Dosimeters gave us a rough, with a scale of fifty X-rays. Need now be more sensitive, for example, with a scale X-ray for five ...

“And my shooter went away with a minus, to the left of the“ zero, ”said Reasonable. - What kind of quality, everywhere trash!

“You are no longer absorbing this, but are giving away X-rays,” Filonov jokes. - Already gave more than grabbed.

“And I have exactly zero,” said Mikhailov. - But his eyes burned and began to scratch his legs. - He frantically combed his ankles.

“This is your manbrand, Valentin Sergeevich,” Reasonable said. - From jaundice not only allergies, diarrhea can be ...

I drove towards the sprinkler. Wash the road. The solution on the pavement foams. Splashes rustle on the Rafik Bottom. I have long been familiar with the sickening smell of desorbing solutions. Asphalt, however, such a wash that dead poultice. Radioactivity is well absorbed into bitumen, and in order to make the asphalt clean, it must be cut down and laid new. Or at least dirty asphalt to cover the top clean.

Not a soul around. No birds are visible, although there is not, a raven flies far away lazily and low. It would be interesting to measure its activity. How much he scored radiation in feathers. But after a few kilometers another living soul. Towards us from the side of Chernobyl along the side of the road runs, churning out the radioactive dust, the piebald foal. Confused, lonely, turns his head, looking for his mother, laughs plaintively. In these places, the cattle have already been shot. The kid miraculously survived ...

Run, run away from here, baby! .. However, the wool on it is also very radioactive. But still - run, run from here. Maybe lucky ...

Chernobyl is very close. Left and right - military camps, tent camps, soldiers, a lot of equipment: armored personnel carriers, bulldozers, engineering barrage vehicles, for short - IMRs, with mounted manipulator arms and bulldozer knives. They remind Tanksonly without gun turrets. And again, tent camps. Troops, troops, troops. These are the chemical units of the Soviet Army. There are already about fifteen thousand of them here.

We drove like an extinct village. Not a single living soul. This unusual silence oppresses. And again right and left of the field. Radioactive greens are receding into the distance. Here are chickens, raking paws and something pecking in radioactive dust ...

Entering Chernobyl. The sun, blue sky without a single cloud, a light haze. Asphalt is wet from decontamination solutions. Everywhere on the streets, near the shoulders - armored personnel carriers. There is a movement of cars, as it turned out, from headquarters to headquarters. Here are the headquarters. Different ministries and departments. We drive along the main street.

- Where ? - asked the driver. - In the district party committee or vocational school to Kizime, there is now the Chernobyl NPP Construction Directorate ...

“In the district committee, please,” I asked. Patrols in respirators "pig nose", occasionally come across in respirators "petal-200". On some armored personnel carriers, throwing away the hatches, soldiers are sitting, smoking. Others are directly, some, piercing a hole in the respirator and sticking a cigarette into the hole. There are also pedestrians. In respirators. These are those who for some reason have no cars, but urgently have to go through the case to the headquarters of the coal miners, then the minstransstroyevtsev.

We are approaching the square of the district party committee. It is full of cars. Mostly cars of different brands, buses "Kuban", "Rafiki", "UAZ", armored personnel carriers assigned to members of the Government Commission. There are a lot of guards in respirators around: on the square, near the building of the district committee, on the parking cars.

All these cars and other cars will have to be bury after a while: for a month or two of work here they gain such activity that in the cabin up to five or more X-rays per hour.

On the porch is the deputy head of the Soyuzatomenergo EI Ignatenko and two other unfamiliar men. Ignatenko without a cap, a jacket wide-open, a respirator around his neck, smokes.

- Hello! You break the rules of the Republic of Belarus, - I said.

- Hello! Had arrived? Report to Sadowski.

- Is the minister here?

- Here. Just arrived.

Next to the porch is a dosimetrist. Radiometer on the chest, leads a stick-sensor at the surface of the earth, switches the ranges.

- How many? - I asked.

- From the ground - ten roentgen per hour. Air - 15 millirengen per hour.

- And indoors?

- Five millirentgen per hour.

Entered the district committee. Following me is Popel and Hiesalu. Both want to urgently report on the arrival of Sadovsky.

Walked through the corridor of the first floor. Each room is occupied by a separate organization. Leaves, scraps of paper with inscriptions pinned on the doors: IAE (Institute of Atomic Energy), Hydroproject, Ministry of Coal Industry, Ministry of Transport and Construction, NIKIET (chief designer of the reactor), Academy of Sciences of the USSR and many others. Entered the control room. There already Popel and Hiesalu. Sadovsky tortures them:

- Why did you come?

“We don’t know ourselves, Stanislav Ivanovich,” Popel blurted out hopefully in his voice.

- Drive back immediately! Today. Is there a car?

- Yes, Stanislav Ivanovich!

Popiel and Hiyesalu, shining, ran to Rafik. Their cherished dream: away from radiation - came true.

I myself also reported to the First Deputy Minister about the arrival. He said about the task of Semenov and Reshetnikov.

Sadovsky left for vocational school, where the Kizima Construction Directorate was located, about two kilometers from the district party committee.

I looked into the room with a sign "IAE." At the window, close to each other, two desks. Yevgeny Pavlovich Velikhov is sitting at the left table, Minister A. I. Mayorets is sitting at the right table in a blue cotton jumpsuit and a woolen beard on a trimmed head like a machine like mine. It can be seen, they took a bale out of one bale. Next in the chairs is Gosatomenergonadzor’s Deputy Chairman, Corresponding Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences V, A. Sidorenko, Academician V. A. Legasov, Deputy Minister G. A. Shasharin, E. I. Ignatenko. I enter, I sit down on an empty chair.

Mayorets puts pressure on Academician Velikhov:

- Evgeny Pavlovich! We need someone to take organizational leadership in their hands. Dozens of ministries are working here. The Ministry of Energy is not able to unite all ...

“But the Chernobyl NPP is your station,” Velikhov counters, “you must organize, unite everything ...” “Velihov is pale, in a plaid shirt, unbuttoned on his hairy stomach.” Tired look. Has already grabbed about fifty X-rays. - In general, Anatoly Ivanovich, you need to be aware of what happened. The Chernobyl explosion is worse than other atomic ones. Worse than Hiroshima. There is one bomb, and here radioactive substances are thrown ten times more. And plus half a ton of plutonium. Today, Anatoly Ivanovich, we must consider people, consider life ...

I respectfully thought about Velikhov. I thought that the academician cares about people's health.

Later, I learned that the phrase “counting life” acquired a new meaning these days. At evening and morning meetings of the Government Commission, when it came to solving one or another task - for example, to collect fuel or reactor graphite near an emergency unit, to get into the high radiation zone and open or close any valve, - Chairman of the Government Commission I. S Silaev spoke;

- We need to put two or three lives on this ... And on this, one life ...

It was said simply, casually, but it sounded ominous.

The dispute between Velikhov and the Mayor, about who should be the master of the situation, continued.

I left the office. I couldn't wait to find Bryukhanov and talk to him. What I warned him about fifteen years ago in Pripyat, working at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, came true. It all came true, and I wanted to see him. He wanted to say a lot to him. Rather, give him all your anger, all the pain and bitterness. It all came true. And then he was so self-confident, so stubbornly he walked his way, so he neglected the danger, the possibility of a nuclear catastrophe. And it seemed that he was almost right. Ten years Chernobyl NPP - the best in the system of the USSR Ministry of Energy, over-plan kilowatts, concealed minor accidents, honor rolls, passing flags. Orders, orders, orders, glory, explosion ...

Anger strangled me ... It seemed to me that of all the people here - he was guilty alone. First of all, he ...

For his policy, his ideology of the past fifteen years, was embodied. Fomin turned out to be a pawn, an executive pawn in the waves of this ideology. But is Bryukhanov his only ideology? Of course not. Bryukhanov himself is just the executive pawn of that past, stagnant era.

But who is this? .. In the short half-dark passage of the corridor, leaning against the wall, there is a small, puny man in a white cotton jumpsuit, without a cap, gray curly hair, a powdery, wrinkled face, an expression of embarrassment, depression on this face. He is looking at me. Eyes red, hunted ...

I passed by, and then I was struck: “Bryukhanov ?!” I turned around:

- Victor Petrovich ?!

“He is the most,” said the man at the wall in a familiar, hollow voice and looked away.

The first feeling that arose in me when I recognized him was a feeling of pity and compassion. I do not know where the anger and anger against him have gone. Before me stood a miserable, crushed man. He looked up at me again.

We looked at each other in silence for a long time.

“That's it,” he finally said, and looked away. And it was strange for me to say, but it was a shame at that moment that I was right. I wish I was wrong ...

“You look bad,” I said, ridiculous. It is ridiculous. For hundreds, thousands of people are now irradiated with the actual efforts of this person. And yet. I could not speak to him otherwise. - How much did you get an x-ray?

“One hundred — one hundred and fifty,” a man standing in the twilight against the wall answered in a husky, hoarse voice.

- Where is your family?

- I do not know. It seems, in Polesye ... I do not know ...

- Why are you standing here?

- Nobody needs me ... I hang out like shit in the hole. No one here needs ...

- Where is Fomin?

- He went crazy ... Let go to rest ...

- Where?

- To Poltava ...

- How do you evaluate the current situation here?

- There is no owner ... Someone in the forest, some for firewood.

- They told me that you asked Shcherbina for permission to evacuate Pripyat on April 26 in the morning. This is true?

- Yes ... But I was told - to wait for the arrival of Shcherbina, not to raise panic ... We didn’t understand much at that time, we thought the reactor was complete ... It was the most difficult and terrible night ... for me ...

“For everyone,” I said.

- It is not immediately understood ...

- What are we standing here? Let's go to some workroom.

We entered the empty room next to Velikhovskaya, sat down at the table against each other. Eye to eye again. There was nothing to talk about. Everything is clear. For some reason it was thought:

“He is a delegate to the 27th Party Congress. I saw on TV. The television camera several times searched his face in the hall. It was then majestic, the face of a man who reached the summit of recognition. And yet ... more ... The imperious face was ... "

- Did you report to Kiev on April 26 that the radiation situation at the NPP and in Pripyat is within the normal range?

Chernobyl notebook. Part of 5


- Yes ... That was the way the devices that were then shown were shown ... In addition, there was a state of shock ... In addition to the will, the head itself was losing the incident, linking it with a prosperous past and with a complete absence now

of the future ... I really came to my senses only after the arrival of Shcherbina. I wanted to believe that something else could be corrected ...

I took a notebook to write, but he stopped me.

- Everything here is very dirty. There are millions of decays on the table. Do not mess up your hands and notebook ...

The Minister Mayorets glanced in, and Bryukhanov, apparently out of habit, readily jumped up, forgetting about me, and went to him. Hid behind the door.

A stranger, also a powder-pale man, entered (when exposed to radiation doses up to 100 X-rays, a spasm of the outer capillaries of the skin occurs and it seems that the person's face was powdered). Introduced to me. It turned out to be the head of the first section of the nuclear power plant. Smiling bitterly said:

- If it were not for the runaway generator rotor experiment, everything would still be ...

- How many have you “grabbed”?

- X-ray one hundred ... From the thyroid gland in the first days it was one hundred fifty X-ray per hour. Now it has already collapsed ... Iodine-131 ... In vain they did not allow people to take the necessary things ... Many are now very tormented. It was possible in plastic bags ... - And suddenly he said: - I remember you. You worked for us as a deputy chief engineer on the first block ...

- And I forgot something about you, I'm sorry ... Where are your operators now?

- On the second floor, in the conference room and in the room next to it. In the former office of the first secretary of the district committee ...

I said goodbye and went to the second floor.

“It shines well in the air,” I thought, “why don't they shield the windows with lead? ..”

Before entering the conference room, I slowly walked along the corridor of the second floor to see what kind of rooms were here and who occupied them. Okay, okay ... Mostly ministers, academics. And here is the door without an inscription. Opened, looked. An oblong room, the windows are half-curtained. A gray-haired man sat at the table. I recognized in him the deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR I. S. Silaev. In the past - Minister aviation industry. Replaced Shcherbin here on May 4.

The deputy chairman silently looks at me. Eyes gleam imperiously. He is silent, waiting for what I say.

“Windows should be shielded with leaf lead,” I said, remaining incognito.

He remained silent, but his face slowly began to acquire a harsh expression.

I closed the door and went to the conference room ...

I note that the screening of the windows of the headquarters of the Government Commission was not carried out under Leaf under Silaev. This was done much later, 2 of June 1986 of the year, when Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR L. A. Voronin replaced Silaev, when the reactor suddenly spat out another portion of nuclear mud from under the bags of sand and boron carbide piled on it ...

On the stage of the conference room at the presidium table there were operating operators with operational magazines and communicating with several telephones with the bunker and block control panels of the first three units of the nuclear power plant, where they were on duty, replacing each other, the minimum composition of shifts supporting the reactors in a dampened state. All the people in the “presidium” are guilty, there is no former bearing and atomic operators characteristic of times of success and fame. All pale and powdery, tired, with eyes inflamed from lack of sleep and radiation.

In different places of the hall on the chairs - people sit in small groups, representatives of different specialties, discuss issues for the meeting of the Government Commission.

I pass along the table of the presidium, turned into an improvised control panel, to the window. At the window, in the front row of chairs, I recognize an old friend, the chief of the chemical workshop, Yu. F. Semenov. He discusses with a stranger to me in overalls, as it turned out, the master, the issues of decontamination equipment.

Yu. F. Semenov, who came from Melekess to Pripyat in 1972, I also recruited. He was very eager for the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. He is an expert expert, experienced. For many years he worked on the installations of special treatment of radioactive water. New work at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant was pleased and did not complain about their fate.

- Hello, old man! - I tore him from the conversation.

- Oh! Nice to see you! Only here you see at what time came ...

- I came here ...

Semenov, also pale-powdered, has grown much gray over the past few years that I have not seen him. The resinous black whiskers became completely white.

- You are two years old, how did you get yourself a pension on the first list. I wanted to leave the shop, go to a clean job? "- I asked him.

- Yes ... I wanted to here, but I hesitated somehow ... And now - to some extent ... I thought I would return to Melekess with my family, live out there, but you see ... Now I am needed here.

- Wife, daughter where?

- They are in Melekessa with my grandmother ... They couldn't take things here. All that is acquired, all is lost. And the cottage and the car. I just bought a new one ... In my apartment, I went there yesterday, on all things one X-ray per hour. Where do you go with this? We lived in the first microdistrict. He got the most from a radioactive cloud.

Here Semenov recalled the operators. EI Ignatenko entered the conference room. Noticing me, came up.

“If your story“ Expertise ”(Ignatenko wrote a preface to it) came out before the explosion,” he said, smiling, “it would have become a bibliographic rarity.” You looked like the water. An explosive mixture blew the block ...

“That's why they kept her,” I said, “so that the author does not become a prophet.” So it was said: "To print after the publication of the findings of the Government Commission." So at the end of the year will be released.

“Yes, they have done things,” Ignatenko said thoughtfully, looking out the window, “we will have a long time to gobble ...”

Near the window - a huge bag with football cameras, whitish from talc.

- Why so many cameras? - I asked.

One of the operators, who was sitting at the presidium table, smiling embarrassedly, replied, as if he were embarrassed for these football cameras:

- With their help, we take air samples.

"Where?"

- Yes, everywhere ... And in Pripyat, and in Chernobyl, and in the 30-kilometer zone ...

- Is that, instead of the “cameras of Turkina”? (“Turkina’s chamber” is a plastic accordion with a valve, when it is stretched, a portion of air or gas is drawn into the sample.)

The operator laughed:

- Football cameras for poverty ... Where can you get them - "Turkina cameras"? And this good bulk ...

- How do you pump them? Pump?

- Where the pump, and where the mouth. Bicycle pumps, too, not enough. In current conditions - a terrible shortage ...

- Mouth to blow - inaccurate measurement will be - I said. - Inhaled - and half of the radioactive substances in the lungs remained. Light as a filter act. With each inhale-exhale in the lungs is the accumulation of radioactive dirt.

- So what to do? - the operator laughs. - We have already breathed so much in the first days that we do not pay attention to such trifles ...

With Ignatenko passed into the next room, the former office of the first secretary of the Chernobyl district party committee. All room U-shaped table. At the table, familiar and unfamiliar people in cotton overalls. Powder-pale Bryukhanov sits idly at the end of the table. I caught myself thinking that he was about the same in his office during times of complete well-being: some detachment, indifference, sort of like he had nothing to do with it.

“It's a mess! - I remembered the maximalist characterization of Kizima, given to him in ancient times. “You will never get a concrete solution from him ...”

On the table - laid out a few photos of the destroyed reactor, made from a helicopter, the general layout of the industrial site, and other papers. Consider the most successful shot with Ignatenko. Bryukhanov pointed with his finger at an irregularly shaped black rectangle on the floor of the central hall littered with fragments of structures.

“This is a spent fuel pool,” said Bryukhanov. - It is chock full of cassettes. There is no water in the pool now, it has evaporated. The cassettes will collapse from residual heat ...

- How many cassettes are there? - I asked.

- Pool full, five hundred pieces ...

- How do you take them from there? - said Ignatenko. - Bury along with the reactor ...

A tall, slender elderly general in ceremonial uniform entered. Appealed to all:

- Who will tell me, comrades? - he asked. - I command a group of army dosimetrists. We will not make contact with the builders or with the operators. Where, what to measure - is not clear. We do not know your designs, approaches to radiation hazardous places. It is necessary that someone coordinates our activities.

Ignatenko said:

- Work together with Kaplun. This is the head of the NPP dosimetry service. He knows everything. And bring your questions to a meeting of the Government Commission ... You must have been here recently?

- Only arrived.

- Well, proceed as I said.

The general retired.

As time went. I needed a car to get to Pripyat and to the block. I asked for help from Ignatenko.

“The task is difficult,” said Ignatenko. - Transport snapped up. I personally do not have a car. Here are thousands of hosts. Ask Kizima.

I went downstairs to the control room. EI Pavlov, Deputy Head of Glavtekhstroy of the USSR Ministry of Energy, was on duty at the HF telephone.

- Do you have a car? - I asked. - To slip into Kizima headquarters.

- No Unfortunately. Here, each with its own car. From where, what and how - the devil will break his leg. Sadovsky left somewhere in his Zhiguli ...

- Okay, go pohom. Be healthy.

I went outside.

The sun burned. Poisonous fumes rose from the asphalt, poured with desorption solutions. Nauseous sugary smell. I go along the street up. In the morning, birds in green foliage usually chirp, greet the sun, And now something is quiet. And the foliage is kind of quieted down, sort of inhibited. It seems so. Not dead yet, but not that live, trembling, as in the clean air. The foliage greenery is unnatural, as if the leaves were waxed, mothballed, and they froze and listened, sniffing around the ionized gas surrounding them. After all, from the air shines up to twenty milliratgen per hour ...

But still, trees are still alive, they still find something of their own in this plasma, which is necessary for life. Here and cherries, and apple trees in violent color. In some places there is already an ovary. But all the flowers and the ovary are accumulating activity. Where to get from it? Around she ...

A young woman of about twenty in a white cotton jumpsuit breaks off cherry blossom branches at the fence of an abandoned yard. The result was a large bouquet.

- What places will you be, girl? - I asked her

- From Yeisk ... I came here to help Chernobyl victims ... Why?

- No, nothing ... There are a lot of grooms here. Soldiers, great - to choose ... The girl laughed:

- I need your suitors ... I came to help. . - she dipped her face in a bouquet.

“The flowers are dirty,” I said.

“Oh, you,” the girl dismissed me and began again to break the branches.

I also broke a few densely strewn with white flowers branches. Moved with a bouquet to Kizime. Turned into the lane to the left. Lots of dust on the road. A mixer rumbled past, picked up clouds of radioactive dust. I stretch the respirator, I pull it deeper. From dust because from 10 to 30 X-ray per hour ...

The construction of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant (the name is still old), and in short - the headquarters of Kizima, is located in the former building of vocational schools. At the entrance and around full of people. They stand, sit on benches, walk back and forth on business and without work. Driving and driving cars raise clouds of dust that have not settled for a long time. Blue sky, merciless sun, calm and calm. Most people's respirators hang around their necks. Some, when the dust rises, stretch them on the nose. Thirty meters from the vocational school, in the supply yard - broken concrete trucks, mixers, dump trucks. In general, they are working, but they are so polluted with radiation that, while working on them, you are sometimes irradiated more than from the environment. Activity in cabins is up to ten roentgens per hour. This is a big problem here: the failure of technology from radiation ..

Not far from the porch of the vocational school - two armored personnel carriers, passenger cars: "Muscovites", "Lada", "UAZ", "Rafiki", "Niva". Snooze behind the wheel or smoke about drivers.

There is a dosimetrist with a radiometer on his chest. Sensor on the long rod measures the activity of dust. The porch is a high thick linden. Birds can not be heard. In the rays of the sun, a large blue fly rings elastically.

Not all wildlife disappeared. There are flies. And not only the big blue, but also the usual home. Many flies inside the building. The smell, hit in the nose, it becomes clear that the bathrooms are not working well. In the lobby, at the entrance door, a dosimetrist measures the activity of a special piece on a low-profile, protective overalls, working. The face of a working brown-brown, he is excited.

- Where have you been? - asked the dosimetrist, putting the sensor to the thyroid gland.

- At the dam ... Even in the transport corridor ...

- No more go there ... Enough with you ...

- How many took? - I heard a question from a worker.

“They say they don’t go there anymore,” said the dosimetrist and walked away.

I asked him to measure the activity of a bunch of flowers.

- Twenty x-rays per hour. Throw it away ... I went outside and threw a bouquet into the courtyard, to the radioactive machines.

Returned. Looked into two or three rooms. On the floor, side by side resting after seized doses of workers in blue and green robes. In one of the rooms is a young guy. standing on his elbow, said to another:

- As if you were crushed with chains, such tiredness. In a dream wildly tends, but I can not sleep.

“I have one too,” says his friend. - Here they are, my twenty-five X-rays as manifest ...

Came to Kizime. At the reception desk, the dispatcher scoffs at the phone. He speaks with Vyshgorod. I realized that he was talking with the manager of the trust Yuzhatomenergostroy A. D. Yakovenko.

- We need people to change! Shouts the dispatcher. - Drivers are needed! Next brigadier ... Here he is ... I give up ... Do not ... ?. Yes, they all picked up already ...

Several people left the Kizima office. Excited. I enter. Kizima is one. Uncorks a jar of mango juice. On the cheeks there is a spiderweb of Petryanov tissue fibers from a petal respirator.

- Hello, Vasily Trofimovich!

- Ah, hello Muscovites! - he sadly replies. In his greetings is always a trick. Not just now. It was always like this as I remember it. The man at work, whoever he is, always interests him primarily in business terms. Without lyrical digressions, she explains, nodding at the can of juice:

- It contains the most vitamins, the whole complex. From radiation helps, restores strength.

He drinks juice greedily. Convulsively twitching Adam.

“Here,” he says, “I work as a foreman ...” The phone rang. Kizima picked up the phone.

- Yes! Kizima ... I am listening, Anatoly Ivanovich ... Minister, - he whispered to me, covering the microphone with his hand. - Yes, yes, I listen. Take a pencil and a piece of paper? I took it. I draw a slanting line at forty-five degrees, so ... Now vertical ... There is ... Now horizontal. Drew ... It turned out a right triangle. Everything? - He listened for some time, then hung up. - Here, you know, I work as a foreman. Minister Mayorets, as the senior foreman, and Comrade Silaev, deputy chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers, as the head of the construction site. Complete mess. They do not understand anything in construction. Here you are, call the minister. Gave me a drawing on the phone. Triangle ... - Kizima turned a leaf to me. - It was he who made me portray the blockage near the block. He says swing cement mortar on him. It's like I'm a first-grader and I don't know anything. And I walked this blockage on foot on April 26 in the morning. And then a few more times. And take into account, without any dosimeters and respirators. And now just from there ... And he to me, you know, draw a triangle. Well, painted, and then what? I, frankly, do not need them: neither ministers, nor deputy chairman. Here is a construction, even if radiation-dangerous, but a construction. I am the head of construction. Velikhov is enough for me as a scientific adviser, the military should organize a commandant's office and ensure order. And people, of course. People ran away. I mean the regular composition of the construction site. And the directorate. They left without documents and severance pay for more than three thousand people. The dosimetry service is not organized, radiometers and dosimeters are not enough. Optical dosimeters, those that are, most do not work. I send twenty-five people with one dosimeter and the one that is out of order in the danger zone. But even the faulty one acts magically. People trust this piece of iron. And without it, do not go on exposure. Here you have a dosimeter ... Give it to me. I'll send twenty more people with him ...

“I will return from Pripyat — I will,” I promised Kizime. - And for those for whom I agreed with the Headquarters of the civil defense of the country, did you send a car? Fifteen hundred sets is the way out. Organize service yourself. Do not wait for the weather by the sea. Take the help of one experienced "dosika" at the Directorate.

- So you have to do ...

A foreman was in charge of driving the delivery of dry concrete to the mortar unit, from which a cement mixture would be pumped through a pipe to the blockage.

“Vasily Trofimovich,” he addressed Kizime. “We need drivers to replace those who are out of action. We burn people. This shift has already chosen its entire rate. Almost all have twenty-five rem and more. People feel bad.

- And what about Yakovenko? - I asked. - Three days ago, his dispatcher called to Moscow and complained that the trust could not cope with seconded drivers, they say, idle, they drink vodka, there is no place to settle, nothing to feed ...

- But why is he lying? I desperately need people!

- I will contact Moscow now, I will ask to urgently send. The foreman came out.

“My chest burns, my cough, my head aches,” said Kizima. - So all the time.

- Why don't you shield with lead windows, car cabins? This will reduce the exposure.

“Lead is bad,” Kizima says in a determined tone. - It is alarming people and holding back work. I have already seen this. Do not lead ...

Call Kizima picked up the phone.

- So ... So ... And what does Velikhov say? Thinking? .. Let him think. Stop filing the mix for the time being until the blockage .. - Put the phone down. - Geysers of liquid concrete began to hit. The fuel in the blockage as a liquid gets, whether the atomic acceleration begins, or just a violation of heat transfer and a rise in fuel temperature. The radiation situation is sharply deteriorating.

Knock on the door. A young Major General entered and with him three more officers: a colonel and two lieutenant colonels.

“Major General Smirnov,” the young military man introduced himself. - I was recommended to contact you for help.

- Sit down, please, - invited Kizima, - I listen to you.

- Our unit arrived to protect the cooling pond. The water in it is high activity ...

“As in the primary circuit during reactor operation,” said Kizima. - There, after all, the fire trucks pumped water with fuel from the submerged minus marks of the station. Minus sixth degree of curie per liter in the pond ...

“So,” the general continued, “in order to avoid sabotage, they can blow up a dam, and all the dirty water will go to Pripyat and the Dnieper ... I set up posts all around the dam, but some kind of shelter is needed to protect the sentries from exposure. ..

“I offer trays,” said Kizima. - We have here reinforced concrete trays with a length of two meters each. Put on the priest at some angle to one another, to get the "door" to enter, and the booth is ready. Give a command?

- Let's! - the general said happily. Kizima called, ordered. The military are gone. I, in turn, contacted Moscow. I asked to urgently send drivers to replace irradiated. About the same talked with Yakoveiko. He promised that tomorrow morning twenty-five people would arrive in Chernobyl for a substitution.

- I would need, Vasily Trofimovich, - I said, - rush to the emergency unit. Can you give the car for an hour or two?

“Machines are rubbish ... The drivers, who were seconded from the atomic construction sites, collected a dose, without warning and not waiting for a replacement, leaving their vehicles, by the way taking away the radioactive dirt.

- The order on new and additional secondment of passenger cars was given yesterday in Moscow. Today, returning from Pripyat, I will check. Do you give a car?

- Here, one boss went to Kiev for a day. Take it "Niva". She has two leading bridges, it can fit. Grab a radiometer from dosimetrists. For an hour or two lend. - Kizima called the car number. - The driver's name is Volodya.

- Not shy?

- The guy is fighting. Recently from the army.

I left Kizima's office. Having introduced himself, he took a radiometer for a couple of hours from the dosimetrists, checked and recharged his optical dosimeter DKP-50.

Fortunately, Volodya had a special pass to Pripyat. Ten minutes later we already jumped on the highway towards the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. I drove along this road hundreds of times in the seventies. And later, when I was already working in Moscow and came here on a business trip, the 18-kilometer-long asphalt tape was only here, on the stretch from Chernobyl to Pripyat, edged on the right and left with pink concrete of meter width. These are protective stripes so as not to break the asphalt from the sides. We rejoiced at the time that only we have such a road and that less money will have to be spent on repairing the roadway. But now...

- And if the motor stalls near the 4 unit? - with an obvious podnolkoy suddenly asked Volodya. - We have already had this happen, though not near the block, but in Pripyat ... It doesn’t bake like this ...

- Recently from the army? - I asked him.

“About half a year,” answered Volodya.

“Then don't be scared,” I said. - Will you lead if you stall ... In what specialty did you serve?

- On the "UAZ-469" drove the regimental commander ... And here is the dosimetric post. Soldiers chemical troops, look, - Volodya turned my attention.

On the side of the road there was a big green tank car with attachments: pumps, appliances, hoses ...

From the side of Pripyat, a Moskvich drove up, they stopped him, measured it with a wheel sensor, bottom, body from above. Passengers and the driver were asked to leave. They began to wash the car with stripping solutions. Soldiers in respirators and helmets made of cloth, tight-fitting the head, ears, falling down by shoulders.

One of the soldiers, with a radiometer on his chest and a long stick sensor, did us with a hand signal. We stopped. He checked the special pass glued by Volodya to the windshield. Everything is good. Sniffed the sensor with our "Niva" - background.

“You can go,” said the soldier. - But keep in mind - there the car will get dirty. Vaughn, on the "Moskvich" - three roentgen per hour. And do not wash. Do not mind the car?

- We have a radiometer, - I showed the device, - be careful.

The soldier attentively looked at me with his absorbing blue eyes and somehow vaguely shook his head, saying that you could not lead me around, uncle, and, slamming the door with a force, he gave a waving hand.

Volodya gave a gazku. "Niva" flew with a whistle. And I looked at the asphalt tape trimmed with pink concrete. It turns out that in vain they were happy then that the asphalt, backed by concrete, would not break off. And now - everything is dirty, very dirty. And asphalt, and pink concrete. All ... Why? ..

I lowered the glass and stuck out the sensor. It was interesting to find out how the activity increases with the approach to Pripyat.

Right and in front, behind radioactive greens running off into the distance, the snow-white complex of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the rays of the May sun was well visible, the openwork lace of the masts of the combined switchgear 330 and 750 kilovolts.

I already knew that lumps of fuel were thrown onto the ORU-750 platform, and from there great siphon ...

Against the background of all this gorgeous whiteness and delicacy, a terrible look of the black collapse of the 4 unit was given by pain in the soul.

The radiometer needle initially showed 100 milli-hourgen per hour, and then confidently crawled to the right - 200, 300 ... 500 millientgen per hour. And suddenly - a jerk on the behind-scales. I switched the ranges. 20 X-ray per hour. What is it? Most likely the x-ray breeze from the emergency unit. After a couple of kilometers, the needle of the radiometer fell again, but this time at 700, millirategen per hour.

In the distance, a well-distinguished, long-familiar sign appeared: "The Lenin Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant" with a concrete torch. Next - a concrete sign: “Pripyat. 1970 year.

So: to the right, past the Construction and Concrete Plant Administration - to the block, straight and a little to the left, where the concrete arrow of the pointer is directed, —the conduit through the railway, to the left of which is the Yanov station, - to the city of Pripyat, where fifty thousand inhabitants recently lived. And now...

- Come on, Volodya, first in Pripyat, - I asked.

Volodya took a little to the left, gave gas, and soon we flew into the overpass. Before my eyes opened the snow-white, in the rays of the sun, the city. On the overpass, the radiometer needle again jerked to the right. I began to switch ranges.

- Quickly skip this place - I said Volodya. - In this direction there was a cloud of explosion. Set up here ... Quick ...

At high speed, we slipped through the hump of the overpass and flew headlong into the dead city that stretched before us. Immediately they caught the eye and struck painfully - the corpses of cats and dogs, everywhere: on the roads, in the courtyards, in the squares - white, red, black, spotted corpses of shot animals.

An empty abandoned city, and these sinister traces of abandonment and irreversibility of misfortune. Involuntarily thought: “Why not clean? Same..."

“Drive along Lenin Street,” I asked Volodya, “it's easier to turn her back to the house where I lived when I worked here.”

Building number house - the ninth, I remembered until now.

In the middle of Lenin Street is a boulevard, young but already tall poplars, on the sides of the walkway there are benches, full-blown bushes. At the end of the street you can see the impressive building of the city committee of the CPSU, to the right of it is the ten-storey hotel “Pripyat”, to the right - the pier on the old river Pripyat. Next - a restaurant, the road to the hotel "Lastochka", where the newcomers stayed.

The city looked strange. Like early, early morning. But only here it is very light, and the sun is at its zenith. But everyone sleeps in a dead fast sleep. Utensils and linen on the balconies. The glare of the sun in the windows, similar to the cataract, but the window that opened by chance and like a dead tongue, a curtain falling out, faded flowers on the window-sills ...

- Stop, Volodya, right here. Slow down ...

The radiometer needle “crawled” back and forth from one X-ray to seven hundred millirentgen per hour.

“Drive slowly,” I said. - Here is my home ... I lived here. On the second floor. See how the mountain ash has grown. All in radioactive color. When I reached the second floor, I did not reach it, but now I reached the fourth floor.

Is empty. Tightly curtained windows. But it is felt that there is no life behind these curtains. Painfully, they are somehow depressingly motionless. There are bicycles on the balcony, some boxes, an old refrigerator, skis with red sticks. Everything is empty, deaf, dead ...

On a narrow concrete courtyard road - across the corpse of a huge black, in white apples, Great Dane.

- Stop near the corpse, measure how much wool has gathered.

Volodya drove the left wheels to a flower bed and stopped. The green of the flowers from the radiation blackened, the flowers faded. The activity of the soil and concrete of the road is sixty roentgens per hour ...

- Look, look! - cried out Volodya, pointing to the three-storied school building with huge windows of the gym. My son studied there. I remember the festive evening. Assembly Hall, the joyful faces of students and teachers ...


Classroom in one of the schools. Pripyat and the surrounding areas for several centuries will be unsafe for human habitation. Scientists estimate that it will take about 900 years to completely decompose the most dangerous radioactive elements.




On the narrow street from the school, along the wall of a long five-story building, two large skinny pigs ran in our direction. They jumped to the car, squealing, shook their faces muzzily at the wheels, into the radiator. With hunted red eyes they glanced at us, snuffed us up, towards us, as if asking for something. Their movements were uncoordinated, uncoordinated. They were shaking.

I slipped the sensor to the side of the hog - 50 X-ray per hour, then to the corpse of the dog - 110 X-ray per hour. Hog was trying to grab the sensor with his teeth, but I managed to pull back.

Then the hungry radioactive pigs began to devour the mastiff. They quite easily ripped large chunks out of the side of an already decayed corpse, pulling the corpse out and dragging it back and forth over the concrete. A flock of anxious blue flies rose from the sinking eyes and gnawing jaws.

- Here is a mean musk scum, no radiation takes them! Give it back, Volodya.

- Where we go? - he asked.

- On the overpass - and to the destroyed block.

- And if the motor stalls? - Volodya asked again, smiling slyly.

- Will stall - you will start again, - I answered him in a tone. - Go.

Driving into Lenin Street, Volodya asked:

- We are driving in the opposite lane? Or how? .. Our side is over there. Go around the square?

- Do not.

- Somehow uncomfortable. It seems to break the rules of the road.

- Do you see any other movement? Volodya smiled wickedly, and we ran not on our side past the corpses of dogs and cats to the emergency power unit. Overpass slipped at full speed. Again, the radiometer needle rushed several ranges to the right and fell again.

We drove along the old road past the Department of Construction, the house-building factory, the dining room of the “Lisova Pisnya” and the concrete mixing unit.

On the right, a terrifying picture of the destroyed power unit opened. The entire rift and dam had the color of black burnt. Above the floor of the former central hall, where the reactor, wavy streams of upward, ionized gas radiation flowed upward. Somehow unusually new and ominous in this disruption and blackness glittered in the sun plucked from the dead pillars and drums-separators shifted in the direction ...

Four meters to the block.

Look, Volodya! - Inside the fence, near the destroyed block and close to the rubble, soldiers walk, collect something ... - Turn to the right. Here it is ... Next ... Drive behind the building of the CWTO and stop close to the fence.

“Fry us,” said Volodya, looking purposefully at me. His face is red, tense. We are both in respirators.

- Stop here ... Oh! Yes, there are officers too ... And the general ...

“Colonel-General,” said Volodya.

- This is probably Pikalov ... They collect fuel and graphite by hand. See, go with buckets and collect. Poured into containers. Vaughn, placed iron boxes ...

Graphite was rolling behind the hedge, next to our car. I opened the door, slipped the radiometer sensor very close to the graphite block. Two thousand X-rays per hour. Closed the door. It smells of ozone, fumes, dust and something else. Maybe roast flesh ...

The soldiers and officers, having collected a full bucket, somehow, it seemed to me, slowly walked to the metal boxes-containers and emptied the contents of the buckets there.

“My dear ones,” I thought, “what a terrible crop you are gathering ... The harvest of the stagnant twenty years ... But where? Where are the millions of rubles allocated by the state to develop robotics and manipulators? Where? Stolen? .. Let the wind ...? "

The faces of soldiers and officers are dark brown. Nuclear tan. Forecasters promise heavy rains, and so that the activity is not washed away by rains into the ground, instead robots, which are not, people went. Later, upon learning about this, Academician Alexandrov was indignant: “People are not spared at Chernobyl. It will all fall on me…”

But he was not indignant when he put forward an explosive RBMK reactor to Ukraine ...

There are piles of sand in the distance. The Ministry of Transport and Construction is already digging grabs under the reactor. Already struck two tunnels. Then the coalminers will take the baton from them.

“They dig a concrete pillow,” said Volodya. - They say that a bottle of vodka under the reactor costs 150 rubles ... For decontamination.

- Go! - I ordered Volodya. - Look, see, there is a road ahead. It goes along the supply channel. On it you will turn on the left.

We are going. Against the end of the engine room - 200 X-ray per hour. On the road, along the station node of transformers - abandoned fire trucks. I counted - nineteen pieces ...

Volodya taxied on the road. Let's go past the switchyard 750. The radiometer needle jumped to an 400 X-ray per hour. Matter of course - here threw fuel at the explosion. Meters through 200, opposite the switchyard 330, the arrow dropped to 40 X-rays per hour. And suddenly ... Damn! Unforeseen. The road is littered (blocked) with reinforced concrete blocks. There is no passage. And X-rays run like time. To the left of the asphalt railway.

- Well, Volodya, show what you are capable of. Roll up to the railroad, and 50 meters along the canvas, here is pas this concrete line, which leads to the ABK.-1. Forward!

"Niva" did not disappoint. And Volodya was on top. Near ABK-1 activity is one x-ray per hour. On the square in front of the administrative building several armored personnel carriers. In the middle - build a soldier. The officer goes in front of the line and scolds his subordinates for violating radiation safety rules: they sit on the ground, smoke, undress to the waist to get tanned, drink vodka, and so on. The officer and the soldier are not wearing respirators, they hang around his neck.

“Illiteracy from poorly delivered education,” I thought. “After all, offspring will come from these young guys ... But even one x-ray per year gives a fifty percent chance of mutation ...”

- Stay, Volodya, here, I quickly ... Look, don't leave, otherwise I will be stuck here ...

Volodya smiled encouragingly and sympathetically.

Capturing the radiometer, ran into the bunker. It is clean. Not even a background. But stuffy. Full of people. As in a bomb shelter during the war. Tables, beds on the sides for the rest of the staff. There's a group of vacationers sulking at the goat. There is a knock knock. Dosimetrists on duty are here, along with telephones — operators who have contact with the main control room and with the headquarters in Chernobyl, in the district committee of the CPSU. On the wall is a map of radiation measurements at the industrial site. But I do not need. I measured it myself ...

He left the bunker and climbed to the second floor of the ABK. Silence, emptiness. I went through the transition gallery to the tenth mark of the deaerator shelf ... Now - fast forward! My goal is the unit control panel of the 4 unit. I have to see the place where the fatal button of the explosion was pressed, see at what height the arrows of the position indicators of the absorbing rods were stuck, measure the activity on the control room and close by, understand the situation in which the operators worked ...

Quickly, almost running, I walked down a long corridor towards the 4 block. To the control room-4 approximately 600 meters. Faster...

On the radiometer - x-ray per hour. The arrow slowly creeps to the right. I passed the MCR-1 and the PCR-2. The doors are open. The figures of the operators are visible. Dissolve the reactors. Rather, they support the reactors in the cooling mode. 3 block He already got the explosion. Activity - two X-rays per hour. I go further. Metallic taste in the mouth. There are drafts, it smells of ozone, fumes. On the plastic floor there are fragments of blown-out glasses. Activity - five X-rays per hour. The failure near the premises of the complex "Scala", seven X-rays per hour. Here is the second stage CRB panel. Ten x-ray per hour.

The feeling that I am walking through the corridors and cabins of a sunken ship. On the right is the door to the stair-elevator block, then to the backup control room. On the left is the door to the control room-4. People who now die in the 6 clinic of Moscow worked here. I enter the room of the backup control panel, whose windows face the dam. 500 X-ray per hour. Glasses are broken by the explosion, crunch and squeal under heels. Back! I enter the control room-4. At the front door - 15 X-rays per hour, at SIUR's workplace (Leonid Toptunov, who is dying now) - ten X-hours per hour. On the selsyns-indicators of absorbing rods, the arrows froze at a height of two, two and a half meters. When moving to the right, the activity grows. In the extreme right side of the control room - 50 — 70 X-rays per hour. I jump out of the room and run towards the first power unit. Quickly!..

Here it is - it's unthinkable. The peaceful atom in all its pristine beauty and intimidating power ...

Volodya on the spot. The sun, blue sky, heat thirty degrees. The system in the middle of the square has long collapsed, the officer has gone somewhere. Soldiers sit on armored personnel carriers. Smoke. Two stripped to the waist, sunbathe. Youth does not believe in death. Young are immortal. Here it is so clear. Could not resist shouting:

- Guys, grab the extra rem! You have just been instructed!




About 800 thousand people took part in eliminating the consequences of the Chernobyl accident

The blond soldier smiles, stands up on his armor,

- And what are we, we're nothing ... we are sunbathing ...

- Go!

By the evening of 9 in May, approximately in 20 hours of 30 minutes, part of the graphite burned in the reactor, an empty space formed under the dumped cargo, and the whole machine of five thousand tones of sand, clay and boron carbide fell down, throwing out a huge amount of nuclear ash from under it. There has been a sharp increase in activity at the station, in Pripyat and in the 80-kilometer zone. The increase in activity was felt even over 50 kilometers in Ivankov and other places.

In the darkness that had already come, they raised the helicopter with difficulty and measured the activity ...

Ash lay on Pripyat and the surrounding fields.

16 May I flew to Moscow.

LESSONS OF CHERNOBYL

Reflecting on the lessons of the Chernobyl tragedy, first of all I think about those hundreds of thousands of people whose fate was more or less affected by the nuclear disaster 26 of April 1986 of the year.

I think about the dozens of dead, whose names we know, and about the hundreds of unborn, about the interrupted lives, whose names we will never know, because they died due to the termination of pregnancy in women exposed in Pripyat 26 and 27 April ...

We are obliged to remember the immensely high wages for decades of atomic frivolity and criminal complacency.

By 17 in May 1986, the VOKhR Directorate of the USSR Ministry of Energy buried with military honors at the Mitinsky cemetery fourteen people injured on April 26 in the emergency unit and died in Moscow's 6 clinical hospital. These are operators and firefighters. The struggle of the doctors for the life of the remaining heavy and less severe patients continued.

Employees of the USSR Ministry of Energy apparatus were on duty at the clinic, helping the medical staff.

In the early seventies, I was lying here on the ninth floor, in the department of Professor I. S. Glazunov. Then there was still no extension building on the left. The department was crowded with radiation sickness patients. There were very serious cases.

I remember Dima, a boy of thirty. I was exposed to radiation, being within half a meter from the source. Stood back to him and a little right side. A beam of rays went from the bottom up. The maximum impact fell on the legs, feet, perineum, buttocks. Towards the head, the effect waned. He stood with his back to the source, so he saw not the flash itself, but its reflection on the opposite wall and ceiling. Realizing what was the matter, he ran off something, for which he made one third of the way around the source. Was in emergency conditions for three minutes. I took the incident very soberly. I calculated the approximate dose received by him. The clinic entered an hour after the accident.

Upon admission to the clinic, the temperature is thirty-nine, chills, nausea, agitated, eyes glisten. He speaks gesticulatingly, a little jokes about what happened. However, it is very coherent and logical. A little uncomfortable for everyone from his jokes. Kontakten, tactful, patient.

After 24 hours after the accident, a patient from four points (sternum, iliac bones, both front and left behind) was taken to have a bone marrow for koriological analysis. On puncture behaved calmly and very patiently. The average integral dose for the whole body is four hundred rad. On the fourth or fifth day, great suffering began to cause damage to the mucous membrane of the mouth, esophagus, and stomach. In the mouth, on the tongue, on the cheeks, the ulcers, the mucosa was stratified, sleep and appetite were gone. Temperature thirty eight — thirty nine, is excited, eyes shine, as at the addict. From the sixth day, the skin of the right shin appeared, swelling, feeling of spreading in it, stiffness, morphine pain.

On the sixth day, due to deep agranulocytosis (a drop in the number of granular forms of leukocytes responsible for immunity), about fourteen billion marrow cells (about seven hundred and fifty milliliters of bone marrow with blood) were transfused.

The patient was transferred to a sterile quartz chamber. The period of intestinal syndrome began. Stool - 25 — 30 once a day with blood and mucus. Tenesmus, rumblings and transfusions in the cecum. In connection with severe damage to the mouth and esophagus, I did not receive food through the mouth for six days in order not to injure the mucous membranes. Nutrient mixtures were infused intravenously.

At the same time, lingering painful blisters appeared on the perineum and buttocks. The shin of the right leg is blue-purple, swollen, shiny, smooth to the touch.

Hair removal started on the fourteenth day (hair loss), and it was very strange. All the hair on the right side fell out: on the head and on the body. Dima himself said that he was like a quick convict.

Very patient, a little tired of us with his jokes. The peculiar humor of the gallows, however, he was very good at encouraging the other two, who had been irradiated with him.

They were completely limp, although the course of the disease was definitely easier for them. Dima wrote humorous notes to them in verse, read the trilogy of Alexei Tolstoy's “Going on a Calm” and said that at last he could calmly lie down. But sometimes he broke down and very steeply went into depression. However, this depression was not difficult for others. For a long time he was irritated by loud conversations, music, the noise of heels. One day, he yelled at such a depression to one doctor, that from the heels of his heels, diarrhea begins. Relatives to him up to three weeks was not allowed.

From the fortieth day, his condition improved, and on the eighty-second day Dima was discharged. There remained a deep trophic ulcer (non-healing) on ​​the right leg. Very lame. There was a question about amputation of the right leg for a generation ...

The second patient is Sergei, twenty-nine years old. He lay alone in the neighboring quartz chamber. Entered from the research institute, where he manipulated radioactive substances in the Hot Chamber. Due to too close a convergence of pieces of fissile material, a nuclear surge occurred.

Despite the immediately started vomiting, he calculated an approximate dose - ten thousand glad. Half an hour later lost consciousness. Delivered on an airplane in critical condition. Repeated vomiting, temperature forty, swelling of the face, neck, upper limbs. He had such hands that it was not possible to measure pressure with an ordinary cuff. Sisters had to push her.

He patiently suffered trepanbiopsy and bone marrow puncture. Conscious. Through 54 hours after the accident, blood pressure plummeted to zero. In 57 hours, Sergey died from acute myocardial dystrophy ...

My attending doctor, with whom I became friends, told me after my discharge about the death of Sergei:

“Under the microscope, it was impossible to see the tissue of the heart at all: the nuclei of cells formed clusters, scraps of muscle fibers ... It was essentially death under the beam from the direct effects of ionizing radiation, and not from secondary biological changes. It is impossible to save such patients, since the tissue of the heart simply crawls ... "

His friend Nicholas, thirty-six years old, was at the accident next. Spent 58 days. It was a continuous torment: severe burns (the skin went down layers), pneumonia, agranulocytosis. He was transferred to the bone marrow in the old method from sixteen donors. Thanks to all these procedures, pneumonia and agranulocytosis have been managed. In addition, he had severe pancreatitis, he shouted heavily from pain in the pancreas. Drugs did not help. Calmed down only after anesthesia with nitrous oxide.

It was early spring. It seems April. Like now in Chernobyl. The sun was shining, and the hospital was very tic. I looked to Nicholas. He lay alone in a sterile chamber. Next to the bed was a table with sterile surgical instruments, on the other table - ointment Shimbezon, Vishnevsky, furatsilin, propolis tincture, sea buckthorn oil, sterile packer with marlechka wound on it. All this for the treatment of bare skin.

He was lying on a high slanting bed Above the bed - a frame of iron rods, powerful lamps on it so that it would not be cold, because Nikolai was completely naked. The skin from sea buckthorn oil became yellowish ... But what is it? .. Nikolai ... Vladimir Pravik ... How terribly scary everything happened again! .. Fifteen years later - the same ward, the same slanting bed with an iron frame, heating lamps , according to the schedule included quartz ...

Vladimir Pravik naked lies on an inclined bed under an iron frame with lamps. The entire surface of the body is burned by radiation and fire. It is difficult to make out where by fire, where by radiation, everything merged. Monstrous swelling outside and inside. Swollen lips, mouth, tongue, esophagus ...

Then, fifteen years ago, Nikolai screamed terribly from the pains of the internal organs and skin. Not able to block the pain at that time. Now learned. Too much has accumulated in people of pain ... But nuclear pain is special, it is intolerable and merciless. It brings to shock and loss of consciousness. The whole body of the fireman-hero was overwhelmed with nuclear pain. And then pricked morphine and other drugs that for a time stopped pain syndrome. Pravik and his comrades underwent an intravenous bone marrow transplant. Intravenously, the liver extract of many embryos was poured to stimulate blood formation. But ... Death did not recede ...

He already had everything: agranulocytosis, intestinal syndrome, and epilation (hair loss), and stomatitis with severe edema and detachment of the oral mucosa ...

But Vladimir Pravik stoically endured pain and torment. This Slavic hero would have survived, death would have conquered, if only the skin had not been killed to its full depth ...

And it seemed that in such a state there was no place for worldly joys and sorrows, not for the fate of his comrades. Himself in fact on the verge of death. But no! While I could still speak, Vladimir Pravik tried to find out through sisters and doctors what was going on with his friends, how were they? Are they alive? Do you still fight, now with death? He wanted them to fight, their courage to help him. And when in some incomprehensible way they still heard the news: he died ... he died ... he died ... - like the breath of death itself, - the doctors told the sick that it wasn’t here, that it was somewhere else, in another hospital ... That was a lie to the rescue.

And then came the day when it became clear: everything that modern radiation medicine was capable of doing was done. All methods of high-risk and conventional therapies are applied to combat acute radiation sickness, but in vain. Even the newest “growth factors” that stimulate the proliferation of blood cells did not help. Because it needed a living skin. And Pravik did not have a piece of it. She was all killed by radiation. Radiation killed and salivary glands. Mouth dried out like land in a drought. Pravik therefore could not yet speak. Just watched, blinked for centuries without eyelashes that fell out, looked with expressive eyes, in which sometimes a burning fire of protest and unwillingness to submit to death flashed. Then the internal resistance forces began to weaken and gradually dried up. Began dying, the disappearance of the flesh in his eyes. He began to thaw. to dry, to fade. It was mummified by skin and body tissue killed by radiation. A person is decreasing, decreasing, decreasing with every hour, every day. Damn nuclear age! Even to die humanly is impossible. The dead — blackened, dried mummies — became light as children ...

Testifies V.G. Smagin;

“In Moscow, in the 6 clinic on Schukinskaya, we were placed first on the fourth and then on the sixth floor. Heavier, firefighters and operators - on the eighth. Among them are firefighters: Vashchuk, Ignatenko, Pravik, Kibenok, Titenok, Tischura; operators: Akimov, Toptunov, Perevozchenko, Brazhnik, Proskuryakov, Kudryavtsev, Perchuk, Vershinin, Kurguz, Novik ...

We lay in separate sterile wards, which were quartz several times a day according to schedule. Quartz lamps were aimed at the ceiling so that the rays did not burn. After all, we were all terribly tanned, we had a nuclear tan ...

The saline solution that was poured into the vein in the Pripyatskiy medical unit for all of us had a positive effect on many people, because it had removed intoxication caused by radiation. Patients with doses up to four hundred happy felt a little better. The rest were tormented by severe pains in the skin irradiated and burned with fire and steam. The pain in the skin and inside exhausted, killed ...

The first two days, 28 and 29 April, Sasha Akimov came to our room, dark brown from nuclear tan, severely depressed. He said the same thing, he did not understand why it exploded. After all, everything was going fine, and before pressing the “AZ” button, no parameter had any deviations.

“It hurts me more than pain,” he told me on April 29, leaving forever.

He did not appear again. He lay down and did not get up. He became sharply worse.

All the heavy ones lay in separate quartz chambers, on a high sloping bed. Over them the heating lamps. They lay naked, because all the skin was inflamed and swollen, it had to be treated, turned over the sick. The bone marrow transplant was made heavy and light heavy with the use of “growth devices” - drugs that accelerate the growth of bone marrow cells, but the heavy ones could not be saved ... ”

Testifies L.N. Akimova:

“His parents and twin brothers were on duty near Sasha. One of the brothers gave him his bone marrow for transplantation. But nothing helped. While he could speak, he kept repeating to his father and mother all the time that he did everything correctly and could not understand what had happened. It tormented him to death. He also said that he has no complaints about the staff of his shift. They all did their duty.

I was with my husband the day before my death. He could no longer speak. But there was pain in the eyes. I know, he thought about that damned fateful night, lost everything in himself again and again and could not plead guilty. He received a dose of 1500 X-rays, and perhaps more, was doomed. He became more and more black, and on the day of his death lay black as black. He was all charred. He died with open eyes. He and all his subordinates were tormented by only one thought, one question: “Why?”

The doctor of medical sciences A.V. Barabanova tells:

“We did everything possible to save Akimov and his comrades (bone marrow transplantation, growth factors), but their skin died from radiation. And without a skin a person cannot live. Remember the story, during the time of Alexander the Great the boy was painted gold, and he died ... Akimov did not believe that he would die. Seeing the tormenting of the Toptuns, he asked me: "Is Lenya really going to die? .."


“I visited Glory of Braznik on the fourth of May 1986 of the year A young guy of thirty. Tried to ask him what happened. After all, no one in Moscow really knew anything then. Hawk Moth lay naked on an inclined bed. The whole swollen, dark brown, swollen mouth. Through the force said that the whole body is terribly sore, weakness.

He said that at first he broke the roof and a piece of reinforced concrete slab fell to the zero level of the machine hall, broke the oil pipeline. Oil caught fire. While he was extinguishing and putting on a plaster, another piece fell and broke the valve on the feed pump. Disconnected this pump, cut off a loop. Black ash flew into the breach of the roof ... It was very hard for him, and I didn’t ask him anymore. I asked everyone to drink. I gave him Borjomi.

- The pain, everything hurts ... It terribly hurts ...

I, he said, did not know that there could be such a terrible pain ... ”

Testifies V.G. Smagin:

“I was at Proskuryakov two days before his death. He was lying on an inclined bed. Monstrously swollen mouth. Face without skin. Naked. Chest in patches. Heat lamps above it. He asked to drink everything. I had a mango juice with me. I asked if he wanted juice. He said yes, he really wants to. Tired, said mineral water. He had a bottle of Borjomi on the nightstand. I filled him with juice from a glass. I left a jar of juice on his nightstand and asked my sister to drink it. He had no relatives in Moscow. And for some reason no one came to him .. .

Near SIUR Leni Toptunov his father was on duty. He gave his son his bone marrow for transplantation. But it did not help. He spent day and night by the bed of his son, turning him over. Lyonya was all tanned to black. Only the back is bright. Apparently, less radiation hit her. He was everywhere with Sasha Akimov, was his shadow. And they burned the same, and almost at the same time. Akimov died on May 11, and Toptunov died on 14. They died the first of the operators ...



Many who were already considered convalescent, suddenly died. So suddenly, on the 35 day, Deputy Chief Engineer for the operation of the first stage, Anatoly Sitnikov, died suddenly. He received bone marrow twice, but there was incompatibility, he rejected it ...

In the smoking room of the 6 clinic, the convalescents gathered every day, and everybody was tormented by one thought: “Why the explosion?”

Thought-wondered. It was assumed that the explosive mixture could be collected in the cooling collector of the CPS cooling water. Cotton could have happened, and the control rods “fired” from the reactor. As a result, they accelerated on instantaneous neutrons. They also thought about the “end effect” of the absorbing rods. If the vaporization and the “end effect” coincided - also acceleration and explosion. Somewhere everyone gradually agreed on the idea of ​​a power surge. But they were not sure until the end ... "

A.M. Khodakovsky, deputy general director of the production association Atomenergoremont, testifies:

“I was directing the funeral of the victims of Chernobyl radiation on behalf of the leadership of the Ministry of Energy of the USSR. As of 10 July, 1986 was buried by twenty-eight people.

Many corpses are very radioactive. Neither I nor the morgue workers at first knew this, then they randomly measured it - a lot of activity. They began to wear costumes soaked in lead salts.

The Sanitary and Epidemiological Station, having learned that the corpses are radioactive, demanded that concrete pads be made at the bottom of the graves, as if under an atomic reactor, so that the radioactive juices from the corpses would not go into the groundwater.

It was impossible, sacrilegious. Long argued with them. Finally, we have agreed that we will solder highly radioactive corpses into zinc coffins. So did.

In the 6 clinic, 60 days after the explosion, as of July 1986, nineteen more people are being treated. At one of them, all of a sudden, on 60 day, burn spots went through the body with a generally good condition. ”

“That's how it is with me,” Khodakovsky pulled up his shirt and showed dark brown spots of indeterminate shape on his stomach. - This is also burn spots, apparently, from working with radioactive corpses ...

A.V. Barabanova tells:

“We washed and cleaned the dead very well from radioactivity. They took out all the insides, washed, decontaminated. Buried pretty clean. But in zinc coffins. Sanitary and epidemiological station requirement ... "

Testifies V.G. Smagin:

“Nikolai Fomin, Chief Engineer of the Chernobyl NPP, was treated at the 6 clinic. I stayed there for a month. After being discharged, shortly before his arrest, we dined with him in a cafe. He was pale, depressed. Ate bad. Asked me:

- Victor, what do you think I should do? Hang yourself?

- Why, Maksimych? - I said. - Gather courage, go all the way ...

Dyatlov and I were at the clinic at the same time. Before discharge, he told me:

- I will be judged. It is clear. But if they give me a talk and listen, I will say that I did everything correctly.

Shortly before his arrest, he met Bryukhanov. He said:

- Nobody needs, waiting for arrest. I came here to the Prosecutor General to ask me where I was and what to do ...

- And what does the prosecutor say?

“Wait,” he says, “they will call you ...”

Bryukhanov and Fomin were arrested in August 1986. Dyatlova - in December.

Bryukhanov was calm. He took with him to the camera textbooks and texts for learning English. Said that he is now, as Frunze, sentenced to death.

Woodpeckers, too, calm and restrained. Fomin lost himself. Tantrums. Made a suicide attempt. He broke his glasses and opened his veins with glass. In time noticed, saved.

On 24 March 1987, a court was appointed, which was postponed due to Fomin's insanity.




From left to right: V. Bryukhanov, A. Dyatlov, N. Fomin at a meeting of the USSR Supreme Court
On the dock were six workers of the Chernobyl NPP:
Viktor Bryukhanov, Director of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant.
Nikolai Fomin, chief engineer of the station.
Anatoly Dyatlov, Deputy Chief Engineer.
Boris Rogozhkin, shift manager at the night of the accident.
A. Kovalenko, Head of the Reactor Shop No. 2.
Laushkin Yu. A., inspector of the State Nuclear Power Agency at the Chernobyl NPP.
Defendants were charged under the Criminal Code of the Ukrainian SSR: Article 220 "Violation of safety regulations in explosive enterprises", 165 "Abuse of official position" and 167 "Irresponsibility in the performance of their duties".
Viktor Bryukhanov later said that the result of the court was clear to him from the very beginning, so he considered it useless to defend himself. Bryukhanov chose the well-known tactics of the Soviet members of the CPSU, who found themselves in the dock, he admitted his guilt on insignificant charges and denied on the main ones. He shifted the main responsibility to Fomin and Dyatlov. Fomin partially admitted guilt; he laid the main responsibility on Dyatlov and Akimov (the deceased shift commander of the fourth unit on the night of the accident). Dyatlov denied guilt on all counts. He claimed that the cause of the accident was solely in the wrong design of the reactor. Rogozhkin, Kovalenko and Laushkin denied guilt. The defendants objected to the charges under the article on violation of safety rules in explosive enterprises, stating that in one document a nuclear power plant or a power unit is not recognized as explosive. The judges concluded that the objections are insignificant, since the decision of the USSR Supreme Court allows the nuclear power plant to be recognized as an explosive enterprise.
All defendants were convicted. Bryukhanov, Fomin and Dyatlov got 10 years, Rogozhkin got 5, Kovalenko got 3, Laushkin got 2. The court materials were classified and remain classified to this day.
Bryukhanov and Dyatlov were released early for health reasons. Fomin had a mental disorder in custody, after which he was transferred to a psychiatric hospital. Kovalenko and Laushkin have served time.
In addition to criminal prosecution of the station workers, a criminal case was initiated against those who did not take timely measures to eliminate the shortcomings of the reactor. This case was dismissed due to an amnesty for the 70 anniversary of October.


I found and met with the deputy head of the turbine department of unit No. 4 of the Chernobyl NPP Razim Ilgamovich Davletbaev. As I wrote, he was at the 4 control room at the time of the explosion. During the accident received three hundred X-rays. Kind of a very sick person. Torment radiation hepatitis. Strongly swollen face. Unhealthy, bloodshot eyes. But keeps well done. Tightened, assembled. Stylishly shaved thin chestnut antennae. Despite the disability, it works. Manly man

I asked him to tell you about that night of 26 April 1986 of the year. He said that he was forbidden to talk about technology. Only through the first section. I said that I know everything about technology, even more than he. Looking for details about people.

But Razim Ilgamovich was very stingy with words. He spoke all the time with an eye on the first section.

- When the firefighters appeared in the engine room, the operators had already done everything there. During the emergency work at the workshop, from 1 hours of 25 minutes to 5 in the morning of April 26, I ran into the control room block several times, reported to the shift supervisor. Akimov was calm, clearly gave orders ...

When it all started, we met without panic. After all, we, by the nature of our profession, were ready for this. Not to that extent, of course, but still ...

Davletbaev is excited, and I do not interrupt.

Characterizes Alexander Akimov, his watch officer:

- Akimov is a very decent and conscientious person. Cute, sociable. Member of the Pripyat City Party Committee. Good friend ...

Characterize Bryukhanova refused. Said:

- I do not know Bryukhanov.

He expressed his opinion about the press that published reports from Chernobyl.

- I closely followed the press. She presented us, the operators, as incompetent, illiterate, almost villains. Therefore, under the influence of the press at the Mitinsky cemetery, where our children are buried, they tore off all the photos from the graves. Sorry only photo Toptunova. Quite young yet. As if inexperienced. We are considered villains. Meanwhile, for ten years the Chernobyl nuclear power plant was producing electricity. Bread is not easy, you know. They themselves worked ...

- When did you leave the unit? - I asked.

- In the morning 5. Started vomiting. But we managed to do everything: we put out the fire inside the engine room, and forced the hydrogen out of the generator, and replaced the water with oil from the turbine oil tank ...

We were not pure performers. We rethought a lot. But in many ways "the train has already left." I mean the technological process at the time of receiving the shift. And it was impossible to stop him. But we were not simple performers ...

Yes, in many ways we can agree with Davletbaev. Atomic operators are not just performers. During the operation of nuclear power plants, they have to take a lot of independent and responsible decisions, often very risky to save the unit, to leave the emergency situation or the difficult transitional regime with honor. Unfortunately, you cannot envisage a whole variety of various combinations of modes and malfunctions with any instructions and regulations. And here the experience and depth of professionalism of operators are important. And Davletbayev is right in saying that after the explosion, the operators showed miracles of heroism and fearlessness. They are worthy of admiration.

And yet ... In that same fatal moment before the explosion, professionalism and experience did not work for either Akimov or Toptunov. Both showed themselves to be pure performers, although a weak attempt to resist Dyatlov’s rough pressure came from both. It was the very moment when professionalism turned on at the operators, but ... the fear of shout took over.

The professionalism of the experienced, cautious Dyatlov, the head of the Rogozhkin NPP shift, the chief engineer Fomin, the director Bryukhanov, did not work either.

But if courage and fearlessness of the nuclear operators after the explosion became the main driving force, then Bryukhanov and Fomin professionalism and honesty did not work even after the disaster. Their lies in their own salvation, an attempt to present what they wished for as real, were still misleading everybody, and it was worth the new human lives ...

So what, in my opinion, is the main lesson of Chernobyl?

He first of all is that this terrible nuclear disaster appeals to us to the Truth. To tell the truth, the whole truth and only the truth. This is first of all. Based on the truth, the second conclusion follows:

The RBMK type reactors are vicious in their design and carry the possibility of a “positive stop”, that is, an explosion, in the future, despite all the measures taken. After all, this reactor still has positive temperature, steam and terminal reactivity effects, the total value of which is too great. Collecting these effects in an amount is not easy, but possible. In Chernobyl, they came together and showed what comes of it.

Chernobyl, like all tragedies in the past, showed how great the courage and strength of the spirit of our people. But Chernobyl, however, appeals to reason and analytical thought: do not forget, people, to look at what has happened with a clear look, do not let them gloss over trouble.

Of course, the right decisions were made for NPPs with RBMK:

- modify the limit switches of the CPS rods so that in the extreme upper position the absorbing rods are still immersed in the active zone to a depth of 1,2 meter.

This measure will increase the speed of effective protection and eliminate the possibility of a permanent increase in the multiplying characteristics of the core in its lower part as the rods lower from the upper marks;

- the number of absorber rods permanently present in the core will be increased to 80 — 90 pieces, thereby reducing the core void coefficient to a tolerable value. This is a temporary measure, which will later be replaced by the transfer of RBMK to fuel

with the initial enrichment of 2,4 percent with the installation of fixed additional absorbers in the core, so that in case of a state of emergency a positive reactivity release does not exceed one beta. But after the explosion in Chernobyl, he reached five beta and more ...

- and lastly: the gradual decommissioning of nuclear power plants with RBMK type reactors and their replacement by thermal power plants using gaseous fuels seems to be the most correct conclusion, based on the lessons of the Chernobyl tragedy.

I want to believe that this will happen. For speaking about any scientific and technical achievements of a rational person, atomic energy, in particular, one should not forget that all these achievements should serve the prosperity of life, not its death.

And because the main lesson of Chernobyl is an even more acute sense of the fragility of human life, its vulnerability. Man’s omnipotence and impotence was demonstrated by Chernobyl. And he warned: do not get drunk with your power, man, do not joke with him, do not look for vain goods, pleasures, shine of glory in him. More closely and more responsibly look into yourself and in what you have created. For you are the cause, but you and the effect. An endless series of happy and difficult years in the future. For him, everything created by you. And that is worse than death and injury of Chernobyl. Ultimately, it hurts the most, those cut by chromosome strand radiation, killed or disfigured genes. They have already gone into the future. Gone, gone ... People will still meet with them. And this is the most terrible lesson of Chernobyl.

And those who died earlier, almost immediately after the explosion, who left us, agonizing in the terrible torment of nuclear death ...

The heart hurts about them, the soul remembers. I want to see these guys again and again. There are few of them, those who are in the ground, but with them so much pain, so much suffering, which would be enough for millions of living, would go away. They are concentrated in themselves, symbolizing thousands and millions of deaths and left the pain of severe warning on earth.

We bow our heads in front of them - the martyrs and heroes of Chernobyl.

Testifies Yu. N. Filimontsev:

“We went after Chernobyl to the Ignalina NPP. There, in the light of the Chernobyl accident, they checked the physics and design of the reactor. The sum of positive reactivity coefficients is even greater than in Chernobyl, in any case - no less. The steam effect is four beta. Do nothing. They asked: why do not you write on an instance? Answered: what's the point of writing? Useless...

Nevertheless, the commission’s conclusions on the reconstruction of all RBMK-type reactors towards increased safety have been rigorously accepted for execution ...

The government submitted several acts of investigation. Including acts of the Ministry of Energy of the USSR, the Government Commission and the Ministry of the Environment. All external organizations made conclusions against the Ministry of Energy. They boiled down to the fact that exploitation was to blame, and the reactor had nothing to do with it. The Ministry of Energy, on the contrary, presented more balanced and balanced conclusions, pointing out the guilt of exploitation and the vicious design of the reactor.

Shcherbina gathered all the commissions and demanded an agreed conclusion for submission to the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee ... "

Mitinsky CEMETERY

On the first anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster, I went to the Mitinskoe cemetery to honor the memory of the dead firefighters and atomic operators. From the metro station "Glider" on the 741 bus after twenty minutes away, just outside the village of Mitino, stretches a huge city of the dead.

The cemetery is completely new, clean. The graves go beyond the horizon. To the left of the entrance is a neat, lined with yellow ceramic tile, a continuously operating crematorium, from the chimney of which there was fast black smoke.

To the right of the entrance is a cemetery office.

The cemetery is young. The trees planted on the graves have not yet grown. In the spring, they are still dark, with unraveled leaves. In different places of the cemetery, over the graves, flocks of crows fly up and sit down: peck left on the graves: eggs, sausage, sweets ...

I walk along the main cemetery street. Fifty meters from the entrance, to the left of the road - twenty-six-graves with white stone tombstones. Above each grave is a small marble stele with an engraved gold inscription: last name, first name, patronymic, dates of birth and death.

The graves of firefighters, six of them, are buried in flowers: vases and pots with fresh flowers, wreaths of artificial flowers with red ribbons and inscriptions on them from relatives and colleagues. Fire countries remember their heroes.

There are smaller flowers on the graves of atomic operators; there are no wreaths at all. On the anniversary of Chernobyl, the Ministry of Atomic Energy and the Ministry of Energy of the USSR did not remember about the fallen. But they are also heroes, they did everything they could. Showed courage and courage. Lost life ...

But here are those who happened to be on that fateful night at the place of the tragedy, not understanding the true meaning of what is happening.

Clear blue sky, sun, warm. The gray of the main street of the cemetery, which takes off and sits on the grave of a crow, stretches into the distance to the horizon, and there are people on it, people walking to expensive graves.

Not far from the burial place of Chernobyl victims, the sounds of machine guns were heard. Looked that way. A platoon of soldiers saluted from the Kalashnikovs. A man who came up said they were burying a soldier who died in Afghanistan.

Gold stars are engraved on the grave steles of the firemen. Here lie Pravik, Kibenok, Ignatenko, Vashchuk, Tischura, Titenok ...

Over the graves of the atomic operators, on marble tombstones, there are no insignia. There are no photos that were in the beginning. Now there is only a photo on the grave of Leonid Toptunov. Quite still a boy, a crooked, chubby, puffy cheek. His father built a neat little bench near the grave. It seemed to me that Toptunov had the most lovingly groomed grave.

Twenty-six graves ... In six of them are heroes-firefighters. In the twenty others: the operators of the 4 unit, electricians, turbinists, service engineers. Two women - Klavdiya Ivanovna Luzganova and Ekaterina Aleksandrovna Ivanenko, workers of the militarized guard. One was at the entrance opposite the 4 block, and was on duty there all night until morning. The second is in the constructed SNF storage (spent nuclear fuel storage) in 300 meters from the block. And in these graves, too, there are genuine heroes, whose courage saved the station no less than the courage of firefighters. I already spoke about them earlier. Here they are: Vershinin, Novik, Brazhnik, Perchuk - the machinists of the turbine hall, who put out the fire from the inside, a fire whose development would have dire consequences for the entire nuclear power plant. What are they awarded? As far as I know, they are not presented to awards. The head of the shift of the reactor department Valery Perevozchenko, who did everything possible and impossible to save his people, to take them out of high-radiation zones, was not awarded either.

Anatoly Andreyevich Sitnikov, deputy chief operating engineer for the first stage, who did not spare his life, was also not awarded, in order to figure out what really happened to the 4-m reactor.

Vibronalad Kharkiv resident Georgy Poparov, who lies here, was not rewarded. He accidentally ended up there, but did not leave the workshop and helped the turbinists to extinguish the fire in the workshop. Although he could leave and stay alive.

An electrician Anatoly Ivanovich Baranov was not rewarded, who, together with Lelechenko, localized an emergency situation on electrical equipment, replacing hydrogen in the generator, supplied power to the 4 unit under furious gamma fields.

Lelechenko was buried in Kiev. He was posthumously awarded the Order of Lenin.

In connection with the awards should be said about one fact. Materials on awarding atomic operators, living and dead, were prepared under a veil of terrible secrecy. Why, one wonders? I, at least, it is not clear. It is not clear, moreover, that the real heroes that the living should be proud of turned out to be unencumbered in the end. Their families, children, grandchildren should be proud ...

And I think justice will prevail. Heroism can not hide.

I walk along the graves, stopping for a long time near each. I put flowers on the tombstones. Firefighters and six atomic operators died in terrible agony from 11 to 17 on May 1986. They received the highest doses of radiation, received the most radionuclides inside, their bodies were highly radioactive, and, as I wrote, they were buried in sealed zinc coffins. So the Sanitary and Epidemiological Station demanded, and I thought about it bitterly, because the earth was thus prevented from doing its eternal and necessary work - turning the body of the deceased into dust. Here it is, damn atom! Even death, even burial is not the same as in normal people. Even here, in the eternal human exodus, thousand-year human traditions are violated. That's how it turns out ...

And yet I say unto them, Peace be with you, sleep well. Your death stirred people up. They even went a long distance from hibernation, blind and gray performance ...

But how much more needs to be done! What are the lessons to be learned? What struggle to endure in order to make our land truly clean and safe for life and happiness ...

But atomic bureaucrats are not asleep. Hacked by several Chernobyl explosions, they again raise their heads, praising the completely “safe” power of the peaceful atom, not forgetting at the same time about hiding the truth. For pouring oil on a peaceful atom, incense can be burned only in one case, if you hide the truth. The truth about the complexity and danger of the work of nuclear power engineers, the potential danger of nuclear power plants for the environment and nothing in the radiation of people around.

This is what Minister of Energy and Electrification of the USSR A. I. Mayoret already issued and issued order No. 90-c from 18 on July 1986 of the year, in which he strictly forbids his subordinates to tell the truth about Chernobyl in print, radio and television. What, one wonders, is the minister afraid of? Understandably. Afraid to lose your seat. Why be afraid? Would take yes left him voluntarily. It does not rightfully take: neither knowledge, nor experience ...

But it will not leave after all. In vain hope. And it would be necessary. And rather. Proku will be more. For we all need truth. Only truth, and the whole truth, for ...

Here I want to cite, very sober, in my opinion, excerpts from an article by the American atomic scientist C. Morgan, urging people to be vigilant.

I would be happy to cite such words of academicians A. P. Aleksandrov or E. P. Velikhov, for example, but they did not say such words.

So this is what K. Morgan said:

"It has now become apparent that there is no such small threshold dose of ionizing radiation that would be safe or the risk of getting sick from which (even leukemia) would be zero ...

Radioactive noble gases (RBG) are the main source of public exposure during normal operation of nuclear power plants. A special contribution is made by krypton-85 with a half-life of 10,7 years ...

I would like to express great dissatisfaction with the practice of “burning” and “burning out” temporary repair workers that is widespread in the atomic energy industry. By this we mean attracting poorly instructed and untrained personnel to the temporary performance of “hot work” (radioactive). Due to a lack of understanding of the risk of chronic exposure, such personnel are more likely to create radiation accidents that may result in harm to both and other people. I consider the practice of “burning out” personnel deeply immoral, and until nuclear power engineering gives up this practice, I will cease to be an active supporter of this industry whether ...

Over the past 10 — 15 years, new data have shown that the risk of human cancer under radiation exposure is ten or more times higher than we thought in 1960, and that there is no safe dose ... ”[5]

--------------------

[5] K. Morgan. Ways to reduce the radiation effects of nuclear energy in the future. M .: Atomizdat, 1980. S. 59 - 64.// Safety of Nuclear Energy / Ed. Rasta and Weaver.

--------------------

And yet I want to end the chronicle with the words of the outstanding Soviet scientist, full member of the Academy of Medical Sciences of the USSR, the largest specialist in the treatment of leukemia, Andrei Ivanovich Vorobiev. Here is what he said in connection with the Chernobyl disaster:

“Can you imagine what will happen to the planet if nuclear power plants are bombed even with conventional warheads, without nuclear charges?” No civilized person can imagine humanity in such an amputated form. I think that after this accident the medieval thinking of mankind should end.

A lot needs to be reassessed today. And although the number of victims as a result of the accident is limited, and the majority of victims will survive and recover, the incident at Chernobyl showed us the scale of a possible disaster. This should literally re-shape our thinking, including the thinking of any person, whether he be a worker or a scientist. After all, no accident is accidental. So, we must understand that the atomic age requires the same accuracy with which the trajectories of missiles are calculated. The atomic age cannot be in only one atomic one. It is very important to understand what people today need to know, for example, what chromosomes are, as well as they know what a four-stroke internal combustion engine is. Without this you can not live. Do you want to live in the atomic age - create a new culture, a new thinking ... "

I would like to believe that the Chernobyl Notebook offered to the reader will help in the formation of such a new culture.

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16 comments
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  1. +4
    27 May 2017 08: 21
    Can you imagine what will happen to the planet if you bomb nuclear plants even with conventional warheads, without nuclear charges?
    ... Given what is happening now in the world, there are more and more crazy politicians ...
  2. +2
    27 May 2017 09: 00
    The hardest reading .....

    What outrages the infinite lies authorities, how many people could save their health and life TRUE! I speak about the inhabitants of the same Kiev.

    At the same time, partbases and other nomenclature of their secretly exported.

    One of my cousins ​​(Kiev) was left tormented with a thyroid gland for a lifetime, like her mother. Another, not believing a lie, left for Moscow, remained healthy ....
    1. +3
      27 May 2017 17: 28
      The complete idiocy of people who, in theory, should be smart and responsible!
      1. +1
        28 May 2017 00: 48
        Thanks to the author for the series of articles, and especially for the photos
  3. +2
    27 May 2017 13: 08
    Black-brown tan, powdery face, black mummy.

    800000 people were carried through the Chernobyl zone.

    All the true culprits of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, starting with Academician Aleksandrov, who deliberately hid the conclusions of an IAE employee Volkov about the accident rate of the RBMK reactors, were granted amnesty in honor of the 70 anniversary of the October Revolution.
  4. +4
    27 May 2017 15: 18
    The story is certainly interesting, but confused by a one-sided narrative. Somewhere on the periphery of the events at 5 o’clock in the morning, the deputy minister of internal affairs appears with 1100 buses and, on a hunch, puts the cordon where there will then be high radiation. The first group of specialists from Moscow suddenly find a GO helicopter with a radiometer and fly over it. It turns out that some force still acted. The GO helicopter was probably from the pair that carried round-the-clock duty and was subordinate to the operational duty officer of the republic’s GO headquarters. The number of buses is amazing, because it is difficult to assemble such a number in several hours without exposing the routes, and there is no evidence that they were not enough. Most likely, an envelope with a mobilization plan of action in case of a serious accident with the evacuation of the population was opened even at night, where the number of buses, where to get them, traffic routes and similar things was meticulously calculated. It follows that someone nevertheless measured the level of radiation and owned the situation. These people completed their work, lacking only the evacuation team.
  5. +4
    27 May 2017 15: 27
    Creepy article. Earth rest in peace to anyone who left ahead of schedule due to this accident
  6. +1
    27 May 2017 15: 38
    In the previous part, the “reactor is intact” is too often repeated, which allegedly results in improper personnel actions. Poor Akimov and Toptunov, who received exorbitant doses of radiation, twist the valves, crazy from the radiation. But after all, the "Chinese Syndrome" has not been canceled, which proved Fukushima. Maybe they deliberately let water into the right rooms to prevent the penetration of the foundation? So, at the cost of their life, they tried to localize the accident so that it would not become even more destructive. Then they are heroes.
    And further. Who is interested, read the notes of Academician Legasov, there the liquidation of the accident on the other hand. Not from the outside, but from the inside.
  7. +3
    28 May 2017 02: 17
    At the same time, flaccid painful blisters appeared on the perineum and buttocks.

    I have such bubbles appeared on both legs to the knees. After some time, after returning from the zone, they passed. The business trip was interrupted in time and sent to the hospital.
    1. 0
      29 May 2017 11: 06
      Quote: kunstkammer
      Poor Akimov and Toptunov, who received exorbitant doses of radiation, twist the valves, crazy from the radiation. But after all, the "Chinese Syndrome" has not been canceled, which proved Fukushima. Maybe they knowingly

      When and where did this happen to you? What kind of business trip?
      1. +2
        29 May 2017 12: 25
        Business trip to the station in Pripyat. It was in August 1996. This was my first trip to the zone. The task is to control pollution levels.
        I remembered the first reaction of some specialists at the station: What has everyone been burned for now - is there only youth left to send?
        It is interesting that we knew that radioactive iodine had come out long ago and had already decayed. However, often when removing a petal, brown-yellow crystals were noticed inside.
  8. +2
    28 May 2017 22: 49
    How well described! As if he himself was not a reader, but a witness and participant in these events ...
    1. +1
      29 May 2017 11: 13
      Quote: Lexa-149
      How well described! As if he himself was not a reader, but a witness and participant in these events ...

      I read the source for a week at http://library.narod.ru/tetr. Still impressed.
      ... all the accidents came together ...
  9. +3
    29 May 2017 15: 28
    Quote: Igor V
    It turns out that some force still acted.

    You are completely right. If the massive involvement of all protection plans needed a decision by a large boss. That, in order to engage some of the most prepared formations (for example, radiation observation posts, EMP, etc.) in the main areas, it was done almost immediately after receiving specific data on the accident. In any case, in our Leningrad and the region.
    I am sure that the same actions were carried out in the Kiev region. That’s why a reconnaissance helicopter flew already and there was a specific number of buses necessary for evacuation.
    If there was a team, those who developed such protection plans would immediately put them into effect.
    1. 0
      29 May 2017 22: 00
      I wrote about this because the main idea in the narrative was that there were no specialists anywhere and nobody really did anything. Academician Legasov, for example, spoke very well about Shcherbin, the chairman of the commission, the army and the Ministry of Internal Affairs, etc., but there was no sense in lying to him, he dictated his notes before his death. He had radiation sickness of the 4th degree and, apparently, in order not to become a “vegetable”, while experiencing terrible torment, he committed suicide. Here, the author criticizes everyone, no one suits him.
      By the way, according to other sources, the radiation infection of the city of Pripyat on the first day did not exceed the level at which emergency evacuation was announced, and so they pulled it, waiting for a forecast for the future. We now know everything, but then nothing was clear.
  10. +1
    3 June 2017 14: 11
    Oh, such a tragedy and so many mutilated fates and lives of people ... And all that was necessary was to pay attention at the design stage that the data on the calculations are disturbing or to draw conclusions from the operation and warnings of people backed up by the calculations, such as Volkov. Feinberg died and everything went on its own, finished something like RBMK and the grass does not grow further, the system is her mother

"Right Sector" (banned in Russia), "Ukrainian Insurgent Army" (UPA) (banned in Russia), ISIS (banned in Russia), "Jabhat Fatah al-Sham" formerly "Jabhat al-Nusra" (banned in Russia) , Taliban (banned in Russia), Al-Qaeda (banned in Russia), Anti-Corruption Foundation (banned in Russia), Navalny Headquarters (banned in Russia), Facebook (banned in Russia), Instagram (banned in Russia), Meta (banned in Russia), Misanthropic Division (banned in Russia), Azov (banned in Russia), Muslim Brotherhood (banned in Russia), Aum Shinrikyo (banned in Russia), AUE (banned in Russia), UNA-UNSO (banned in Russia), Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People (banned in Russia), Legion “Freedom of Russia” (armed formation, recognized as terrorist in the Russian Federation and banned)

“Non-profit organizations, unregistered public associations or individuals performing the functions of a foreign agent,” as well as media outlets performing the functions of a foreign agent: “Medusa”; "Voice of America"; "Realities"; "Present time"; "Radio Freedom"; Ponomarev; Savitskaya; Markelov; Kamalyagin; Apakhonchich; Makarevich; Dud; Gordon; Zhdanov; Medvedev; Fedorov; "Owl"; "Alliance of Doctors"; "RKK" "Levada Center"; "Memorial"; "Voice"; "Person and law"; "Rain"; "Mediazone"; "Deutsche Welle"; QMS "Caucasian Knot"; "Insider"; "New Newspaper"