roentgen (R): A measurement of exposure to X-rays and gamma radiation, based on the amount of energy deposited by ionizing radiation in a mass of air. A thousandth of a roentgen is a milliroentgen (mR); a millionth of a roentgen is a microroentgen (μR). Exposure over time can be expressed in roentgen per hour (R/h). Normal background radiation in the USSR in 1986 was stipulated at between 4 and 20 microroentgen per hour.
rem: Roentgen equivalent man, quantifies the health effects of exposure to ionizing radiation. The rem measures dose equivalency and is calculated using different factors, including the absorbed dose and the type of radiation involved. It can be used to predict the biological effect of a dose, including cancer, regardless of whether it is delivered by alpha, beta, neutron, X-ray, or gamma radiation. One rem is a little less than the citizens of Denver, Colorado, absorb from natural background radiation in the course of a year; 5 rem is the annual exposure limit for US nuclear workers; 100 rem is the threshold of acute radiation syndrome; and an instantaneous dose of 500 rem to the whole body would be lethal to most people. The rem has been replaced by the standard international unit, the sievert (Sv), and its smaller subunits; these are the millisievert (mSv)—a thousandth of a sievert, and the microsievert—one millionth of a sievert (μSv), which is used on the displays of most modern dosimeters. One sievert is equivalent to 100 rem.
Notes
PROLOGUE
Saturday, April 26, 1986: Precise time given on Alexander Logachev’s dosimetry map of Chernobyl station from April 26, 1986, archive of the Chernobyl Museum, Kiev, Ukraine.
Senior Lieutenant Alexander Logachev loved radiation: Alexander Logachev, Commander of Chemical and Radiation Reconnaissance, 427th Red Banner Mechanized Regiment of the Kiev District Civil Defense, author interview, Kiev, June 1, 2017; Yuli Khariton, Yuri Smirnov, Linda Rothstein, and Sergei Leskov, “The Khariton Version,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 49, no. 4 (1993), p. 30.
Logachev knew how to protect himself: Logachev, author interview, 2017.
As he sped through the suburbs: Alexander Logachev, The Truth [Истина], memoir, 2005, later published in another form in Obozreniye krymskih del, 2007; Colonel Vladimir Grebeniuk, commander of 427th Red Banner Mechanized Regiment of the Kiev District Civil Defense, author interview, Kiev, February 9, 2016.
But as they finally approached the plant: Logachev, The Truth.
Their armored car crawled counterclockwise: Logachev dosimetry map of Chernobyl station, the Chernobyl Museum.
2,080 roentgen an hour: Logachev, The Truth.
Part 1. Birth of a City
1. THE SOVIET PROMETHEUS
At the slow beat: Viktor and Valentina Brukhanov (husband and wife; director and heat treatment specialist at Chernobyl nuclear power plant in April 1986), author interviews, Kiev, September 2015 and February 2016. Author visit to Kopachi, Ukraine, February 17, 2006. Cognac and the driving of the stake are mentioned in the documentary film The Construction of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant [Будівництво Чорнобильської АЕС], Ukrainian Studio of Documentary Chronicle Films, 1974. A still photograph of the ceremony is included in the documentary film Chernobyl: Two Colors of Time [Чернобыль: Два цвета времени], directed by I. Kobrin (Kiev: Ukrtelefim, 1989), pt. 3 mark 40:05, www.youtube.com/watch?v=keEcEHQipAY.
If the Soviet central planners had their way: Zhores A. Medvedev, The Legacy of Chernobyl (New York: Norton, 1990), 239; “Controversy Around the Third Phase of the Chernobyl NPP,” Literaturnaya Gazeta, May 27, 1987, translated in “Aftermath of Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant Accident, Part IV,” Joint Publication Research Service, Soviet Union: Political Affairs (hereafter, JPRS, Soviet Union Political Affairs), 111.
They had considered a few options: Vitali Sklyarov, Chernobyl Was . . . Tomorrow, trans. Victor Batachov (Montreal: Presses d’Amérique, 1993), 22.
A small but ancient town: Alexander Sich, “The Chornobyl Accident Revisited: Source Term Analysis and Reconstruction of Events During the Active Phase” (PhD diss., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1994), 203.
The town of Chernobyl: Richard F. Mould, Chernobyl Record: The Definitive History of the Chernobyl Catastrophe (Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 2000), 312.
Two and a half million citizens: Between 1979 and 1989, Kiev’s population grew from about 2.2 million to 2.6 million: V. A. Boldyrev, Results of USSR Population Census [Итоги переписи населения СССР] (Moscow: USSR State Committee on Statistics, 1990), 15: http://istmat.info/files/uploads/17594/naselenie_sssr._po_dannym_vsesoyuznoy_perepisi_naseleniya_1989g.pdf. Also see Sich, “The Chornobyl Accident Revisited,” 196.
Viktor Brukhanov had arrived: Viktor and Valentina Brukhanov, author interview, 2015; author visit to the city of Chernobyl, April 25, 2016.
The oldest of four children: Viktor Brukhanov, interview by Oleg Nikolaevich, “Stories about Tashkent Natives: True and Sometimes Unknown. Part 1” [Истории о ташкентцах правдивые и не всем известные. Часть 1], Letters about Tashkent, April 29, 2016: http://mytashkent.uz/2016/04/29/istorii-o-tashkenttsah-pravdivye-i-ne-vsem-izvestnye-chast-1.
He had an exotic look: Major Vasily Lisovenko (head of the Third Division of the Sixth Department, Ukrainian KGB), author interview, September 2016.
At the Ministry of Energy: Lisovenko, author interview, 2016. Since the revolution, it had been common Soviet practice to appoint loyal Party members to the top jobs in technical enterprises and have them be advised by specialists. Grigori Medvedev, transcript of interview made during the production of The Second Russian Revolution, a 1991 BBC documentary film series: 2RR archive file no. 1/3/3, 16 (hereafter 2RR).
In July 1969: Neporozhny argued for this step in a letter to Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin on July 4, 1969. Sonja D. Schmid, Producing Power: The Pre-Chernobyl History of the Soviet Nuclear Industry (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2015), 34n97.
He set ambitious targets: Charles Dodd, Industrial Decision-Making and High-Risk Technology: Siting Nuclear Power Facilities in the USSR (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1994), 73–74.
The first atomic power plant in Ukraine: V. A. Sidorenko, “Managing Atomic Energy,” in V. A. Sidorenko, ed., The History of Atomic Energy in the Soviet Union and Russia [История атомной энергетики Советского Союза и России] (Moscow: Izdat, 2001), 219.
400 million rubles: The total cost estimate for building Chernobyl was 389.68 million rubles in 1967. See Document No. 1 in N. Baranovska, ed., The Chernobyl Tragedy: Documents and Materials [Чорнобильська Трагедія: Документи і матеріали] (Kiev: Naukova Dumka, 1996): “Appeal from the Council of Ministers of USSR to the Central Committee of Communist Party of Ukraine to approve the project of building the Central Ukrainian nuclear power station near the village of Kopachi, Chernobyl district, Kiev region,” February 2, 1967.
He drew up lists of the materials: Viktor and Valentina Brukhanov, author interview, 2015. Brukhanov also described his responsibilities during these early days in an interview with Maria Vasyl, Fakty i kommentarii: “Former ChNPP director Brukhanov: ‘Had they found legal grounds to have me shot, they would have done so.’ ” [Бывший директор ЧАЭС Виктор Брюханов: «Если бы нашли для меня расстрельную статью, то, думаю, расстреляли бы.»], October 18, 2000, http://fakty.ua/104690-byvshij-direktor-chaes-viktor-bryuhanov-quot-esli-by-nashlidlya-menya-rasstrelnuyu-statyu-to-dumayu-rasstrelyali-by-quot.
Before Brukhanov could start: Baranovska, ed., The Chernobyl Tragedy, Document No. 7: “The joint decision of subdivisions of the USSR Ministry of Energy and Electrification on constructing a temporary cargo berth for the Chernobyl NPP,” April 29, 1970.
A cluster of wooden huts: Brukhanov, interview by Vasyl, Fakty i kommentarii, 2000.
As shock-work brigades excavated: Vasily Kizima (construction supervisor at
Chernobyl), author interview, Kiev, Ukraine, February 2016. Gennadi Milinevsky (Kiev University student sent to Chernobyl construction site to assist with building work in the summer of 1971), author interview, Kiev, April 2016. “Shock workers”—udarniki—was the name given to those members of the Soviet workforce who regularly exceeded plan targets and participated in Communist labor competitions. By 1971 there were 17.9 million shock workers in the USSR: Lewis Siegelbaum, “Shock Workers;” Seventeen Moments in Soviet History, http://soviethistory.msu.edu/1929-2/shock-workers/.
The first group of nuclear specialists to arrive: Nikolai Steinberg, author interview, Kiev, Ukraine, September 2015.
According to Soviet planning regulations: Schmid, Producing Power, 19.
Its residents began to build summer houses: Alexander Esaulov (deputy chairman of the Pripyat ispolkom), author interview, Irpin, Ukraine, July 2015.
Viktor Brukhanov’s initial instructions: Brukhanov, interview by Vasyl, Fakty i kommentarii, 2000; Steinberg, author interview, 2015.
Enough to serve at least a million modern homes: Electricity consumption varies according to many factors, including geographical location, but this conservative estimate is based upon figures provided by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for twenty-first-century homes in the northeastern United States: “What Is a Megawatt?”, February 4, 2012, www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1209/ML120960701.pdf.
The deadlines set by his bosses: Baranovska, ed., The Chernobyl Tragedy, document No. 10: “Resolution of the USSR Ministry of Energy and Electrification on the organization and implementation of operations to oversee the physical and energy launch of the NPPs under construction on USSR territory,” July 29, 1971. Steinberg, personal communication with author, August 6, 2018.
The USSR was buckling under the strain: Some Soviet historians estimate that, in real terms, the USSR’s annual spending on troops and armaments before 1972 amounted to between 236 and 300 billion rubles a year—and by 1989 represented almost half of the state budget. Yevgenia Albats, The State Within a State: The KGB and Its Hold on Russia—Past, Present, and Future, trans. Catherine Fitzpatrick (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999), 189.
From the beginning: Baranovska, ed., The Chernobyl Tragedy, document No. 13: “Resolution of the Communist Party of Ukraine and the Council of Ministers of the USSR on the Construction Progress of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant,” April 14, 1972.
Key mechanical parts: Schmid, Producing Power, 19; George Stein, “Pipes Called ‘Puff Pastry Made of Steel,’ ” Los Angeles Times, May 16, 1986; Piers Paul Read, Ablaze: The Story of the Heroes and Victims of Chernobyl (New York: Random House, 1993), 30 and 46–47.
The quality of workmanship: Sklyarov, Chernobyl Was . . . Tomorrow, 163. (The Russian term pred-montazhnaya reviziya oborudovaniya is translated here as “pre-erection overhaul,” but “installation” is closer to the sense of “montage” in the original. See the original Russian edition of the book, Завтра был . . . Чернобыль. Moscow: Rodina, 1993, 165.)
Throughout late 1971: Baranovska, ed., The Chernobyl Tragedy, document no. 13; Vladimir Voloshko, “The Town That Died at the Age of Sixteen” [Город, погибший в 16 лет], undated, Pripyat.com, http://pripyat.com/people-and-fates/gorod-pogibshii-v-16-let.html.
And still there was more: These construction targets were mandated by Ukrainian Party leaders for the period 1972 to 1974. See Baranovska, ed., The Chernobyl Tragedy, document no. 13.
For an appointment with his boss: Brukhanov’s supervisor Artem Grigoriants headed the Ministry of Energy’s directorate for nuclear power (Glavatomenergo), tasked with overseeing Chernobyl construction and enforcing deadlines.
The Party had originated: The genesis of the Communist Party is described in detail in Robert Service, A History of Modern Russia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), 47–99.
“a classless society”: Raymond E. Zickel, ed., Soviet Union: A Country Study (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1991), 281.
Known collectively as the nomenklatura: Theodore R. Weeks, Across the Revolutionary Divide: Russia and the USSR, 1861–1945 (Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 77.
This institutionalized meddling: The confusion and infighting of the early years of Party bureaucracy was revealed in the captured archives described by Merle Fainsod in Smolensk Under Soviet Rule (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1958).
By 1970, fewer than one in fifteen: Communist Party membership in 1970 was approximately 13.4 million. A. M. Prokhorov, ed., Great Soviet Encyclopedia [Большая Советская Энциклопедия], vol. 24 (Moscow, 1997), 176.
Viktor Brukhanov joined in 1966: Viktor Brukhanov, interview by Sergei Babakov, “I don’t accept the charges against me . . .” [«С предъявленными мне обвинениями не согласен . . .»], Zerkalo nedeli, August 27, 1999, https://zn.ua/society/c_predyavlennymi_mne_obvineniyami_ne_soglasen.html.
“Had the face of a truck driver”: Read, Ablaze, 31.
The humiliation: Sklyarov, Chernobyl Was . . . Tomorrow, 172.
Seated at the top: Vladimir Shlapentokh, A Normal Totalitarian Society: How the Soviet Union Functioned and How It Collapsed (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2001), 56; Stephen Kotkin, Armageddon Averted: The Soviet Collapse, 1970–2000, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 67.
A game of chance: Angus Roxburgh, Moscow Calling: Memoirs of a Foreign Correspondent (Berlin: Birlinn, 2017), 28–30.
Crops rotted in the fields: David Remnick, Lenin’s Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire (New York: Vintage Books, 1994), 249.
Soft spoken but sure of himself: See Sklyarov, Chernobyl Was . . . Tomorrow, 119 and 122. Vitali Sklyarov, Ukrainian Energy Minister at the time of the accident, encountered Brukhanov frequently both in the years leading up to April 26, 1986, and immediately afterward.
Yet when Brukhanov arrived: Viktor and Valentina Brukhanov, author interviews, 2015 and 2016.
Thirteen years later: Viktor and Valentina Brukhanov, author interview, 2016. A photograph of an earlier November 7 celebration in Pripyat, in 1984, is available at “Pripyat Before the Accident. Part XIX,” Chernobyl and Pripyat electronic archive titled Chernobyl—A Little About Everything [Чернобыль: Обо Всём Понемногу], November 14, 2012, http://pripyat-city.ru/uploads/posts/2012-11/1352908300_slides-04.jpg.
Hailed for his illustrious achievements: Viktor and Valentina Brukhanov, author interview, 2016.
Construction was also well under way: Zhores Medvedev, Legacy of Chernobyl, 239; Lyubov Kovalevska, “Not a Private Matter” [Не приватна справа], Literaturna Ukraina, March 27, 1986, online at www.myslenedrevo.com.ua/uk/Sci/HistSources/Chornobyl/Prolog/NePryvatnaSprava.html.
The Soviet counterpart to MIT: Paul R. Josephson, Red Atom: Russia’s Nuclear Power Program from Stalin to Today (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005), 55.
A glossy book: Yuri Yevsyukov, Pripyat [Припять] (Kyiv: Mystetstvo, 1986), available online at http://pripyat-city.ru/books/57-fotoalbom.html.
The average age: Vasily Voznyak and Stanislav Troitsky, Chernobyl: It Was Like This—The View from the Inside [Чернобыль: Так это было—взгляд изнутри] (Moscow: Libris, 1993), 223.
Watched as a pair of elk: Viktor and Valentina Brukhanov, author interview, 2015.
Financed directly from Moscow: Esaulov, author interview.
In the Raduga—or Rainbow—department store: Raduga sold everything from furniture to toys. Natalia Yuvchenko (teacher at School Number Four, Pripyat; wife of Chernobyl senior mechanical engineer Alexander Yuvchenko), author interview, Moscow, Russia, October 2015.
An office on the fifth floor of the ispolkom: Svetlana Kirichenko (chief economist of the Pripyat ispolkom), author interview, Kiev, April 2016.
Trouble was confined: Alexander Esaulov, The City That Doesn’t Exist [Город, которого нет] (Vinnytsia: Teza, 2
013), 14; Viktor Klochko (head of Pripyat department of the KGB), interview by Taras Shumeyko, Kiev, September 2015.
Each spring, the river: Anatoly Zakharov (fire engine driver and lifeguard in Pripyat), author interview, Kiev, Ukraine, February 2016.
Could look back on a year of triumphs: Viktor and Valentina Brukhanov, author interview, 2016.
Speaking unselfconsciously: Remnick, Lenin’s Tomb, 144–47.
Hammered on the anvil: Sklyarov, Chernobyl Was . . . Tomorrow, 123.
Orders of merit and pay bonuses: For example, the Party granted medals to seven Chernobyl engineers involved in the launch of Unit Four in December 1983. “Resolution 144/2C of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union” [Постановление Секретариата ЦК Коммунистической Партии Советского Союза № СТ 144 /2С], March 6, 1984, Microfilm, Hoover Institution, Russian State Archive of Contemporary History (RGANI), Opis 53, Reel 1.1007, File 33.
Not even being manufactured in the USSR: Kizima, author interview, 2016.
“Go build it!”: Viktor Brukhanov, interview by Vladimir Shunevich, “Former director of the Chernobyl Atomic Power Station Viktor Brukhanov: ‘At night, driving by Unit Four, I saw that the structure above the reactor is . . . gone!’ ” [Бывший директор Чернобыльской Атомной Электростанции Виктор Брюханов: «Ночью, проезжая мимо четвертого блока, увидел, что верхнего строения над реактором . . . Нету!»], Fakty i kommentarii, April 28, 2006, http://fakty.ua/104690-byvshij-direktor-chaes-viktor-bryuhanov-quot-esli-by-nashlidlya-menya-rasstrelnuyu-statyu-to-dumayu-rasstrelyali-by-quot.
He found the extra funds: Viktor and Valentina Brukhanov, author interview, 2015.
The last day of December: The commissioning date of Unit Four is specified in Nikolai Karpan, From Chernobyl to Fukushima, trans. Andrey Arkhipets (Kiev: S. Podgornov, 2012), 143.
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