Liquidator
The older generation remembers this day - April 26 1986, exactly 30 years ago. And he remembers the first weeks after ... For example, I had 13. I, still a girl, with a group of mountaineers, in the May holidays, trained in the Crimea, mastering the rocky route of Mount Kush-Kaya near Foros. Once I heard how adults anxiously discuss a gray cloud over the sea: “Isn't that radioactive? Did not bring from here ... ".According to the then custom, questions the children answered evasively, so I'm a "clocked" in the head almost nuclear war and the return to charred house ... However, no adult wine - they did not know themselves, and few people know how terrible was This trouble is an accident at the 4 block of the Chernobyl NPP. And - and fire heroes prevented the worst thing that could happen - the explosion of the neighboring unit and the whole station ... Braves, tushivshie the roof of the turbine hall, did not live a month after the disaster (basement NFM-126, where are the shape and boots heroes - still the most dangerous place in Pripyat, they "fonat").
Sergey Filippovich Smitko, a resident of Sarov, works as chief engineer at the city museum of the city of Sarov in the Nizhny Novgorod region (also, by the way, “atomgrad”, the former Arzamas-16). He speaks about his participation in the liquidation of the accident for the first time in thirty years. While Sergey Filippovich was 33 years ... He says: "At that time I was the head of energy management in the area of a construction company FF-909, and did not expect that in August from Moscow comes a telegram about my trip to Chernobyl. Warned - the less you take things with you, the better. I did not ask for it myself, but I went voluntarily ... Readily. It is necessary - it should be so. ”
He did not regret that he did not succumb to the temptation to take with him an extra sweater - he realized that any thing after the “zone” was destructive. About one still grieves: did not take the camera! The travel of specialists to the Chernobyl NPP has already been clearly debugged - the special ticket office at the Kievsky railway station in Moscow worked, where the ticket was issued immediately, without a hint of a queue. A half-empty train ... Yes, and the morning of August Kiev did not make the impression of a residential one. At the train station there are almost none, and the roads are ironed by watering machines. The detachments to Kiev from Kiev traveled by train to Teteriv station ...
“We lived on the basis of a pioneer camp. I was given workwear, and the first day I was engaged in the arrangement and paperwork. Met with the head of UES FF-605 and chief engineer, deputy that I had to be, and on the second day we went to the station ... I actually graduated with a degree in "Electric stations". But he worked as a builder, as always feared bureaucratic cabinet work, and in the personnel department Arzamas-16 asked where livelier ... Till that moment I had never been on nuclear power plants in the TPP, hydro, in the heat - happened. And on the atomic, no. ”
So it was. When they approached the “zone”, it was not that scary, but uncomfortable. For the first time, my interlocutor experienced such a feeling while driving by a young specialist to the same Arzamas-16. Here was something similar. The same "thorn", the same suspense ...
“The station is a huge building with a length of 700 – 800 m. And the fourth unit is like the opening of a monster's mouth. The collapse, as it was then called, and the area around all the time, terribly "fonili", and even periodically pulsed "emissions."
I, as an engineer and builder, felt sorry for the station. She was modern, successful! Winner of all competitions. There are banners and awards in the director's reception in the shelves ... There were a lot of them. ”
Summer - Autumn 86 was the time when the liquidators implemented the burial plan of the emergency unit. Built and Sarcophagus. Sergei Filippovich took part in this construction as a deputy chief engineer.
He continues the story: “It's hard for me to imagine even now how the firefighters worked, and it was difficult to imagine then. I saw this unit charred and imagined it in a flame ... The temperature is hellish, everything is scattered around the fragments of graphite rods. And they with their hoses on the roof ... They probably understood that they give their lives. The fire department was at the station, people are literate, they probably knew that they had no chance of survival, they were going to die ... ”
However, in order. Sergey Filippovich says that there, at the station, for the first time in his life he saw the most modern construction equipment. Well, maybe I saw something before, but in such numbers and on the same construction site - it wasn’t enough. For example, the largest mobile crane "Demag" - Germany has supplied these valves, however, refused to put in the "zone" of specialists for installation (which would, incidentally, have not prevented because our liquidators had to collect them literally in the open field, and without experience - outside the Chernobyl time limits). However, our leadership also preferred not to let foreign specialists into the “zone”, wishing to downplay the scale of the catastrophe in front of the whole world.
Technicians there were many - cranes from "Liebherr", radio-controlled bulldozers, loaders from the "Pinkerton" concrete "Putzmeister", "Schwing", "Vartington" feeding concrete to a distance 500 m and a height of up to 100 m Work went around the clock. seven days a week. People worked in four shifts - six hours each. But in fact, it turned out like this: completed the task, got his X-ray X-ray x-ray allowance, and sit in the room - do not hang out.
Now it is difficult to imagine (even to the participants of this construction) how difficult it was to try to cover a pulsating radiation volcano. “It’s worth nothing to ruin a person there,” says my interlocutor.
They tried to spare people by counting X-rays and shortening the time for work, but as a rule, they did not succeed in spare. Everything was interconnected - the specialists were too dependent on each other and the results to pay attention to such “trifles” as outdoor time ...
“We carried out works on the installation and operation of temporary power supply of construction mechanisms, work on communication, on elimination of surplus hardened concrete with the help of jackhammers and explosions. Mounted separation wall between 3-m and 4-m blocks. And a lot of things were done on decontamination ... ”.
There was a lack of lighting. Sergei Filippovich recalls how a group of military aeronauts filled and lifted a balloon, designed to hold lights for the construction site. Everyone saw how the commander of the group gave the order to the soldiers, while he himself left for the whole day to “solve the problems of nutrition”. And they, absolutely green conscripts, spent all day on radiation using a balloon, causing sympathy from the staff ... What was to be done? There was then such a system - he scored his "dose" - and on the demob.
By the way, the next day this same lighting unit, which probably cost someone some health, was found hanging on only one cable. The other two were accidentally cut off by an engineering demolition vehicle (based on tank).
Yes, when concentrating on one patch of such a quantity of equipment, it was difficult to avoid such incidents. But still, Chernobyl of that time gave the experience of mobile and precise construction - without delay, without the painful waiting for the necessary materials, without bureaucratic obstacles. It was a model building, which was led by the need to save the world and the country ...
What really disposed to work was that the high heads came, put on the same robes, only with badges “Deputy Minister”, “Member of the Government Commission”, “Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences”. Yes, Slavsky, Usanov, Shcherbina, Vedernikov, Maslyukov, Ryzhkov, Legasov, Velekhov - and many, many others have been there.
In general, if, again, looking for advantages under a microscope, then an extreme situation would awaken human thought — much of what was done there these days was done for the first time at all. And not only in engineering, electronics, science, but also in journalism. For example, in the role of operators, then cranes acted, on which television cameras were hung, etc. Young lieutenants came, graduates of the Moscow Institute of Chemical Technology. Mendeleev - they worked as dosimetrists and studied something along the way.
Sergey Filippovich tells how people tried to protect themselves, before working on the very spot fonyaschie "targeting" with powder-actuated tool lead sheets (nothing "stalker" phenomenon?).
So, from August to October 1 18 my interlocutor scored his 24 X-rays, but left at once - the chief asked: "Serge, tell all changer, please ...". How many x-rays have accumulated while transmitting, it's hard to say ...
And in Kiev, in a coffee shop on Khreshchatyk, another “stalker” case occurred. Attracted by the smell of fresh coffee, the young builder went to the cafe and immediately ordered a double portion in order to fully enjoy the taste of the drink. And what? At the exit of the cafe, a veil suddenly fell over his eyes, began to choke, although he hadn’t complained at all about his health before. I didn’t even have to sit on the bench for the most pleasant half hour ... Home returned to November 6, to 34 birthday, having bought a fashion magazine for my wife in Kiev.
“Given that the danger of man-made disasters in our time, for obvious reasons, persists, I am not sure that this would happen now, everything would have been eliminated at such a time ... Still, the whole country worked there. And built by November 86-th Sarcophagus.
Basically, by the way, in those months at the station worked experts from cities Minsredmash system: Ust-Kamenogorsk, Stepnogorsk, Dimitrovgrad, Penza-19, 16-Arzamas. There were many guys from the Ural and Siberian cities. And there were so-called “partisans” from all over the Union! ”
Sergey Filippovich talks about Chernobyl - the ancient Ukrainian city with wooden houses, gardens and palisades. Shows on the stand of the city museum beautiful-Pripyat - a modern, compact, again - an exemplary and successful city with a population of 50 thousands of people. By the time my hero arrived, she was already a ghost.
And of course, even then they spoke with indignation that Pripyat stood for a day without evacuation - the children went to school, they played in the streets. And next to two kilometers the reactor was burning ... Gawkers from the hill looked at the fire. But someone ran to him! ..
And then in thirty-kilometer exclusion zone branches of apple trees and pear trees were broken from fruit preserver thrown gardens screaming in pain ... In the "zone" floated herds of feral horses. Like mustangs on the prairie. Shot the dogs and cats in the thirty-kilometer strip ... They were sorry, but no one wanted the animals agonizing death from radiation sickness - the laws of humanity, too, somehow mutated into "the zone" ...
I ask: what is the attitude towards the veteran liquidators now? Yes, slowly forgotten. Now, few people are interested in what isotopes you carry in yourself. And the diagnosis of "radiation sickness" and in those days was made when it was already "you do not turn away." And now it is problematic to establish a connection between the liquidator’s diseases and the work at the Chernobyl NPP.
We view the documents, certificates and Certificates of honor (5 pieces) the liquidator of the accident, most importantly, do not give free rein to the imagination, and not imagine that these things may still keep their isotopes ...
Sergey Filippovich asked not to write about the consequences that the “zone” caused to his health. Has caused. “But I'm talking to you now - thanks for that ... In all this stories for me there were a lot of coincidences. After all, I am Ukrainian - it is understandable by last name. My paternal grandmother lived in the village of Vishenki, near Kiev. I just lived in Kazakhstan as a child, then I studied in Samara ... And so, Ukraine is the birthplace of all relatives and friends. It hurts to think about the modern relations between our countries ... ".
Again, we look at the photos of twenty-eight firefighters ... Three are Heroes of the Soviet Union: Lieutenants Kibenok and Pravik (received posthumously) and Major Telyatnikov. I photograph a narrator with a photo of Leonid Telyatnikov, already a Hero, already a lieutenant colonel ...
I could not resist to ask the liquidator of the causes of the accident - I will not describe the detailed response of the tests 4-m unit personnel Chernobyl, tell only conclude: "These were professionals, people with specialized education (not a manager!) And adequate representation of the processes, they there was no malicious intent and even more so - the desire of his own death ... A chain of tragic accidents, along with self-confidence, ”says Sergey Filippovich.
And he adds, a little later: “And if we are to be precise in the wording, then we were not liquidators of the accident. We were the liquidators of the disaster. ”
He, by the way, had a chance to visit the Chernobyl NPP a second time. A year later, in 1987, when I came there for equipment, participating in the construction of the Gorky nuclear power plant. But that's another story…
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