Thirty-five years of the Chernobyl accident
Much has been said about the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and the fate of the city of Pripyat, and they will probably say even more. The question has long gone beyond technical issues. Moreover, in addition to general principles, the absolute majority of people do not understand anything in atomic physics, preferring to operate with clever terms like “iodine pit” or “reactivity margin”, which are often used to cover up reality, drawn from IAEA reports and Dyatlov's book. Yes, and no smart words are needed here, everything has already been said and written, both in open books and in declassified KGB documents, archival file number 992 available on the Web. It has long been a matter of politics, as part of the competition in the global technology market and the confrontation between powers in general. Soviet atomic energy has not gone anywhere. And, despite the accident, it successfully competes with American and European energy, although it is now called Russian. But the school is the same, and the people are often the same.
So a lot has been said and said, and according to the principle:
Will the commission tell you how difficult it is to die.
At first, back in Soviet times, they publicly lied about the staff, shielding the developers. Then, at the end of the USSR, they began to lie about the developers, because publicity. In the period of rampant democracy, they began to lie about the USSR as a whole, because, in the opinion of the lying, it was not the same system. And recently, the Americans have joined in the lies. With their own set of stamps "vodka, balalaika, bears" and these same pioneers. As a result, we have a whole set of myths about that accident, and myths that are easily refuted. But people are lazy. And watching on the screen how conscripts, drunk on vodka, shoot poor dogs - it is more interesting.
Myth # 1. The staff were unskilled.
It is the easiest to refute. The biographies of that shift and, in general, there are those present there at the time of the explosion on the network.
The main person involved is Anatoly Dyatlov, deputy chief engineer for operation of the second stage of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, senior from the administration, who was present on the night of the disaster. Graduated with honors from the Moscow Engineering Physics Institute with a degree in automation and electronics. After that, he worked in Komsomolsk-on-Amur at a local shipyard, participating in the construction of a nuclear submarine for 2 years. During this time, he participated in the installation and commissioning of 14 reactors. He came to the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in 40, at the time of the start of construction. If this is not an experience, then I don't even know ...
The senior of the shift is Alexander Akimov. Graduated from the Moscow Power Engineering Institute with a degree in automation of heat and power processes, at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant since 1979, not a beginner.
The operator who pressed the fatal button is Leonid Toptunov. Graduated from the branch of the Moscow Engineering Physics Institute in the city of Obninsk, the cradle of the Soviet atomic energy, with a degree in reactor design. At the Chernobyl NPP he passed pre-diploma practice and worked since 1983.
The station director is Viktor Bryukhanov. He graduated from the energy faculty of the Tashkent Polytechnic Institute, became director of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant before its construction in 1969.
You can flip and flip. But the pattern is obvious: young people with special education, as a rule, and the older generation - with practical experience or energy education. Many young people have Academician Dollezhal, one of the luminaries of our nuclear industry, as a teacher.
If these are not specialists, then I do not even know - what kind of specialists should they be?
Myth number 2. The station was built poorly
There were problems during the construction.
It is better to quote the KGB documents here:
The receivers of the directorate of the NPP under construction have repeatedly discovered cases of poor-quality welding of reinforcement joints ...
In April 1976, during the construction of liquid waste storage tanks, due to the fault of the foreman of the Tirskaya Right Bank Office, an emergency occurred, as a result of which the lining of the 5000 m3 tank of steel was squeezed out.
Etc. And many pages.
But when were objects of such volume and complexity built ideally?
And the fact that all this was revealed by the KGB, and therefore corrected, means only one thing: the control over the construction site was the most severe, and along several lines at once. That gave its results. Complaints about the quality of buildings were also later, but insignificant and rare.
There were also problems with the technique:
Which, however, were actively resolved and corrected.
Both the first and the second were inevitable. Any large construction site involves thousands of people involved, most of them are low-skilled. And there will always be shortcomings. That is why there is control: both technical, and in the case of especially dangerous objects - by the special services. In the case of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, taking into account the fact that the marriage did not lead to disasters and major accidents, control was set at a high level. The station was safe on this side.
Moreover, she was constantly improving:
By 1986, it was already an experienced team and well-oiled equipment.
By the way, about the accidents.
Myth number 3. Permanent accidents
There were, of course. So what?
I had an accident at home yesterday - the mixer in the bathroom began to leak. It's unpleasant, of course. I had to change, so what? At any enterprise, in any apartment, accidents happen regularly, however, the threats from them are zero. A nuclear power plant is another matter. And a pipe rupture there can cause a reactor shutdown, simply because safety, brought to paranoia, is not a coal-fired boiler house, the risk is terrible. And in order to avoid this very risk, emergency measures are taken, even if the risk is expressed in hundredths of a percent.
Major accidents were of approximately the following character:
Or the maximum is as follows:
rupture of one of 1640 technological channels loaded with fuel assemblies. At the same time, the rod on which the fuel assemblies are attached was cut off, and the graphite stack was partially moistened ... Since the zirconium cladding of the fuel, according to the statement of the director of the NPP, Comrade Bryukhanova V.P. and chief engineer comrade. Akinfieva V.P., not destroyed, no radiation contamination of the technological premises occurred.
There were also operations of emergency protection:
By the way, what about our western partners with accidents?
And everything is the same. Even a little worse.
For example, like this.
And they and we studied. And accidents in the process of creating new technology were inevitable. The question was, rather, in the following: who is not the first to have the big luck. Small accidents are routine. She was, is and will be everywhere. Because pipes corrode, crane cables are frayed, repairmen leave rags in mechanisms, and employees at the end of the shift spit on leaks. What is interesting: in our country, in the West, and in the East. People and iron - they are everywhere people and iron. And if all this does not lead to disasters, then there is nothing fatal in this.
Myth number 4. Damn experiment
Many people know that that night there was a terrible experiment: they turned off the protection, so it exploded. And if there was no experiment, everything would be fine. Well, the image of Dyatlov, painted by the Americans in black colors: they say, a careerist and a totalitarian leader who forced the staff to do anything bad. But in fact ...
And the experiment was planned. Dyatlov's word:
The experiment program really had nothing to do with ... Almost.
We checked one of the emergency protection options; for this, the time for stopping the power unit for preventive maintenance was chosen, which is logical. And Dyatlov did not put much pressure on the staff. What for? And how? Excellent specialists, they understood that they were sitting on a huge barrel of nuclear fuel, and if something went wrong ... It was stupid to threaten the dead with dismissal. And the staff were not schoolgirls: young, in-demand and toothed. Why should they have been afraid of a regular experiment on the run-out of a turbine generator? Why should they have violated the Regulations? Not morons, they understood what the threat was. And therefore they did not violate much.
Myth number 5. Explosions
And the station is serviceable. And the staff are experienced. So why did it take off?
Oddly enough - it coincided.
Two factors coincided: the abnormal regime for this reactor and the easy adventurism of the personnel, however, it was within the limits of the permissible and the instructions. The error is double. The designers did not foresee that this situation is possible in principle, and the staff believed the designers, and not their knowledge and experience. At the same time, both the first and the second were sincerely mistaken, although there have already been cases of overclocking of RBMK reactors when the emergency protection was turned on. True, without such fatal consequences.
Specifically:
In principle, even on May 6, 1986, it was more or less clear what had happened.
And in the certificate of the sixth department of the KGB of the Ukrainian SSR this is stated. First, on the afternoon of April 25, the reactor began to slow down. Then, on the call of the dispatcher, they stopped. And we started working at half capacity. Then, after 23:00, deceleration was resumed, but the reactor dropped to 30 mW, instead of the 700 required for testing. We began to climb, reached 200 MW instead of 700 according to the program, which were reached by about one in the morning, and a turbine generator was prepared. And at 1:23 the experiment began.
And then:
But at 01 h. 23 min. 43 sec. the appearance of alarms for excess power and a decrease in the acceleration period of the reactor (high rate of increase in power) was recorded. According to these signals, the core rods should go into the active zone, but they already go from pressing the AZ-5 button. Other alarm signs and signals appear: power increase, pressure increase in the primary circuit ...
At 01 o'clock. 23 minutes 47 seconds - an explosion that shook the entire building, and after 1–2 seconds, in my subjective sense, an even more powerful explosion. The rods of AZ stopped, not even halfway through. Everything.
The rest is physics of a high degree, which is not particularly understandable.
A number of factors simply coincided, from the shortcomings of the reactor, to its unintentional corral into emergency operation. The explosion became inevitable after the rise in power in the state of the iodine pit. But who knew?
Or guessed the risk but ignored it?
You can't ask the dead. And all the main participants in the experiment died or died, how many years have passed. Who would have confessed?
In the end, this experiment was prepared for several years, and, knowing our internal problems with reporting, the situation when we could “take risks” instead of “delay and reschedule” is quite real. And, according to memories, the staff was interested. The same Tregub stayed after the shift to look, along with his turbinist. Young science fans, there's nothing to be done. Moreover, formally - practically nothing was violated, and the belief in the reliability of technology was iron. And to some extent, a series of accidents at nuclear power plants around the world was inevitable, simply because the belief of people at the end of the 50th century in the victory of reason over nature could not have been broken in any other way. The United States was lucky, their accident on Three Mile Island led to the melt of XNUMX% of the reactor, in our country - to an explosion. Quite an interesting moment - our accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant was preceded by an accident at the Leningrad nuclear power plant.
And they have it at the Davis-Bess NPP.
The French had their own:
NPP Saint-Laurent-des-Eux. Interestingly, eleven years before this accident, in 1969, at the same station:
And it all ended with Fukushima, which is almost worse than our accident.
We all danced on the atomic rake, the only question is in scale and luck.
Myth # 6. Wrong actions
And what are the correct actions of the personnel and firefighters should have been in conditions when nothing is clear?
Both the staff and the firefighters behaved like heroes. And they did their best. It was especially difficult to change the reactor: in the dust, in radioactive steam, they tried to cool the reactor, not yet knowing that it simply did not exist, they were looking for the missing Hodemchuk and even inspected the reactor itself.
Firefighters too:
We did everything we could.
The fire on the roof of the third block was extinguished. The oil (about one hundred tons) was drained by the personnel. And it could have flared up so that there would have been much more victims. By the way, they do not remember about the drains of engine oil (and there were two of them, on April 26 and April 28 from two MCPs). They remember the Chernobyl divers who did not just swim under water, but walked knee-deep in the water. And they did not save the world, but did an essentially useless job. And they did not die from radiation sickness, but lived for a long time. And the fact that there was a mass of hydrogen on the block and:
another quiet feat somehow forgotten. Firefighters and divers were declared heroes of the highest rank, and the shift was declared fools.
Result: one killed under the rubble (Hodemchuk), one from burns and a fracture of the spine (Shashenok), 19 employees from radiation sickness and six firefighters from it. Two female guards also died from radiation sickness. How many did not die directly is unknown. The doctors worked for five, of course: from the crews of the "Ambulances" to the doctors of the MSC-126.
Another tale: they did not evacuate immediately.
How immediately?
To take out 50 thousand people is transport and time. And before the export, it is necessary to conduct radiation reconnaissance. And still find where. And also prepare everything necessary for the evacuees. And also ...
They evacuated in record time, and potassium iodide was distributed in a timely manner. Who does not believe, read how it is happening now.
For example, in the Donbass for seven years, the population of the front-line areas has not been taken out by either side. Or the chronology of evacuations from the sites of natural disasters in the modern Russian Federation: a day is a record. No irony. No one could have done better.
And the nuclear power industry remained.
I could not help but stay, because there is no alternative to her. And it won't be in the near future.
As this winter in Texas has shown, playing with renewables is certainly possible. But in terms of the number of victims, something comes out at the level of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, only in every cold winter ...
There is nothing fatal in a nuclear power plant. You just need to learn the lessons already paid for in blood and health.
- Roman Ivanov
- http://www.pripyat.com/
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