I’m going to prison: Viktor and Valentina Brukhanov, author interview, 2015.
Designed as a refuge: Details from author’s visit to the bunker, February 2016.
Brukhanov went upstairs: Details of Brukhanov’s movements here are drawn from a transcript of Brukhanov’s trial testimony on July 8, 1987, taken contemporaneously in shorthand by Nikolai Karpan and published in Chernobyl to Fukushima (126–34). The plant’s civil defense chief, Serafim Vorobyev, states that Brukhanov instructed him to personally see to the opening of the bunker (Shcherbak, Chernobyl, 396). Brukhanov’s order to announce a General Radiation Accident is confirmed by the telephone operator L. Popova, in Evgeny Ignatenko, ed., Chernobyl: Events and Lessons [Чернобыль: события и уроки] (Moscow: Politizdat, 1989), 95. When she tried to turn the automated system on, Popova discovered that the tape player was broken, so she began making the calls herself, one by one.
The mayor of Pripyat arrived: Brukhanov, court testimony in Karpan, Chernobyl to Fukushima, 128–29. The head of the Pripyat City Executive Committee—the Soviet equivalent of the mayor—was Vladimir Voloshko. Major V. A. Bogdan, whose formal title was the plant’s head of security, is identified as a KGB officer in a KGB memo from May 4: Danilyuk, ed., Z arkhiviv, Document no. 26: “Report of the UkSSR KGB 6th Department to the USSR KGB Concerning the Radioactive Situation and Progress in Investigating the Accident at the Chernobyl’ NPS.”
“There’s been a collapse”: Parashyn, testimony in Shcherbak, Chernobyl, 76.
Then he informed: For a list of his calls, see Brukhanov, court testimony, in Karpan, Chernobyl to Fukushima, 129.
Soon afterward, the director took the first damage reports: Brukhanov, court testimony in Karpan, Chernobyl to Fukushima, 129; Parashyn, account in Shcherbak, Chernobyl, 76.
There were soon thirty or forty men: Parashyn, account in Shcherbak, Chernobyl, 76.
After witnessing the horror: Alexander Yuvchenko, author interview, 2006; Yuvchenko, interview by Bond, New Scientist, 2004; Vivienne Parry, “How I Survived Chernobyl,” Guardian, August 24, 2004.
Standing emergency regulations: Karpan, Chernobyl to Fukushima, 18.
Amid the radioactive steam: Ibid., 18 and 20–22; Razim Davletbayev, “The Last Shift” [Последняя смена], in Semenov, ed., Chernobyl: Ten Years On, 371–77.
Remained locked in a safe: Karpan, Chernobyl to Fukushima, 25.
Razim Davletbayev told himself: Davletbayev, “The Last Shift,” 377–78.
Busy shutting down Turbine Number Eight: Yuri Korneyev, testimony in Kiselyov, “Inside the Beast,” 44; Korneyev, author interview, Kiev, 2015. Further details of Baranov’s actions are provided at “Materials: Liquidation Heroes” [Материалы: Герои-ликвидаторы], the website of the Chernobyl NPP, http://chnpp.gov.ua/ru/component/content/article?id=82.
The engineers had begun to comb the rubble: Karpan, Chernobyl to Fukushima, 19; Nikolai Gorbachenko (radiation monitor at Chernobyl NPP), testimony in Grigori Medvedev, Truth About Chernobyl, 99.
So three men picked their way: Grigori Medvedev, Truth About Chernobyl, 101.
Their path was strewn with wreckage: Gorbachenko, testimony in Kiselyov, “Inside the Beast,” 45.
The fire escape that zigzagged: Zakharov, author interview, 2015; Petrovsky, author interview, 2016.
A handful of men: Telyatnikov’s account in David Grogan, “An Eyewitness to Disaster, Soviet Fireman Leonid Telyatnikov Recounts the Horror of Chernobyl,” People, October 5, 1987; “Firefight at Chernobyl,” transcript of Telyatnikov’s appearance at the Fourth Great American Firehouse Exposition and Muster, Baltimore, MD, September 17, 1987, online at Fire Files Digital Library, https://fire.omeka.net/items/show/625.
Dozens of small fires: A detailed description of the location of the fires is provided in Karpan, Chernobyl to Fukushima, 12–15.
Ignited by fragments of blazing debris: Description of fires in Telyatnikov, “Firefight at Chernobyl”; and Felicity Barringer, “One Year After Chernobyl, a Tense Tale of Survival,” New York Times, April 6, 1987.
The air was filled with black smoke: Telyatnikov in Barringer, “One Year After Chernobyl.”
In the darkness around their feet: Karpan, Chernobyl to Fukushima, 13.
A more tangible threat: Piotr Khmel, author interview, 2015.
“Give me some pressure!”: Zakharov, author interview, 2016.
Just as they had been trained to do: Ibid. A report of laying foam hoses to the Unit Three roof was made by Pravik to the dispatcher and noted in the Kiev Region Fire Department Dispatch Log at 3:00 a.m.
Kibenok had a separate line: Zakharov, author interview, 2016.
Even then, the handful of men: Petrovsky, author interview, 2016; Rogozhkin, recalling a conversation with Telyatnikov in court testimony reproduced in Karpan, Chernobyl to Fukushima, 170.
Pellets of uranium dioxide: Karpan, Chernobyl to Fukushima, 13. According to the US National Institutes of Health, uranium fires cannot be effectively extinguished with water, unless the burning material is submerged in liquid: “Even this will not immediately extinguish the fire because the hot uranium metal dissociates the water into H2 and O2, providing fuel and oxygen for the fire. If the quantity of water is sufficient, eventually the water will provide enough cooling to extinguish the fire, but a significant amount of water can boil away in the process” (“Uranium, Radioactive: Fire Fighting,” NIH, US National Library of Medicine, webWISER online directory).
Down on the ground: Petrovsky, author interview, 2016.
A fatal dose of radiation: Estimates of what constitutes a fatal dose are based on a “median lethal dose,” or LD50, that which—if sustained instantaneously over the whole body and left untreated—kills half of the individuals irradiated. Based on data drawn from the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, these estimates ranged from 3.5 to 4.0 Gy—or 350 to 400 rem. But experience with the victims of Chernobyl led to an upward revision of these estimates, suggesting that, with medical treatment, healthy men could survive whole-body doses of at least 5.0 Gy, or 500 rem. Gusev et al., eds. Medical Management of Radiation Accidents, 54–55.
At a rate of 3,000 roentgen an hour: Radiation levels on the rooftops are described by Starodumov, commentary in Chernobyl 1986.04.26 P. S. [Чернобыль.1986.04.26 P. S.] (Kiev: Telecon, 2016); B. Y. Oskolkov, “Treatment of Radioactive Waste in the Initial Period of Liquidating the Consequences of the Chernobyl NPP Accident. Overview and Analysis” [Обращение с радиоактивными отходами первоначальный период ликвидации последствий аварии на ЧАЭС. Обзор и анализ], Chornobyl Center for Nuclear Safety, January 2014, 36.
“Fuck this, Vanya!”: Petrovsky, author interview, December 2016.
On the other side of the complex: Leonid Shavrey, testimony in Kiselyov, “Inside the Beast,” 47.
The first men to arrive: Vladimir Prischepa, recollections quoted in Karpan, Chernobyl to Fukushima, 15–16.
Had arrived to take command: Leonid Shavrey would later recall that Telyatnikov smelled of vodka and seemed completely intoxicated, although Petrovsky contested this. He insisted that Telyatnikov barely drank at all: “Maybe a shot at home—but at work? Never.” Petrovsky, author interview, 2016.
Still drunk on the People’s Champagne: Piotr Khmel, author interviews, 2006 and 2016.
In the bunker: Parashyn, account in Shcherbak, Chernobyl, 76; Brukhanov, court testimony in Karpan, Chernobyl to Fukushima, 140.
Yet not everyone had succumbed: Serafim Vorobyev, account in Shcherbak, Chernobyl, 397; Grigori Medvedev, Truth About Chernobyl, 152–54.
Less than a hundred meters away: Valentin Belokon, ambulance doctor, remembers seeing people coming from Unit Three toward the main administrative building a few minutes after 2:00 a.m. See Belokon’s account in Shcherbak, “Report on First Anniversary of Chernobyl,” trans. JPRS, pt. 1, 26–27.
At 3:00 a.
m., Brukhanov called: Kiev Region Fire Department Dispatch Log, Chernobyl Museum.
Vorobyev stood by and listened: Vorobyev, account in Shcherbak, Chernobyl, 397.
Yet Vorobyev knew: Ibid., 398.
“There’s no mistake”: Ibid.; Grigori Medvedev, “Chernobyl Notebook” [Черно быльская тетрадь], Novy Mir, no. 6 (June 1989), trans. JPRS Economic Affairs, October 23, 1989, 35.
Dyatlov assured him: Read, Ablaze, 68–69; Grigori Medvedev, Truth About Chernobyl, 95.
Outside in the corridor: Dyatlov, Chernobyl: How It Was, 50.
Running back upstairs: Ibid., 53–54; Arkady Uskov, account in Shcherbak, Chernobyl, 71–72.
By now, the levels of radiation: Bagdasorov (shift foreman, Unit Three, Chernobyl NPP), account in Kopchinsky and Steinberg, Chernobyl, 17; Dyatlov, How It Was, 17.
It was 5:15 a.m.: Viktor and Valentina Brukhanov, author interview, 2016; Parashyn, recollections in Shcherbak, Chernobyl, 76.
Ignoring instructions from above: The shift foreman was Yuri Bagdasarov, who disobeyed the order of the plant’s chief engineer, Boris Rogozhkin, to keep his reactor going. See Bagdasarov’s recollections in Kopchinsky and Steinberg (Chernobyl, 17) and the operating log of Unit Three in Dyatlov, Chernobyl: How It Was, 56–57.
At the other end of the plant: Uskov, account in Shcherbak, Chernobyl, 71–72.
“Get that water in!”: Viktor Smagin (Unit Four foreman on the 8:00 a.m. shift, the “Second Shift” following Akimov’s), recollections in Vladimir M. Chernousenko, Chernobyl: Insight from the Inside (New York: Springer, 1991), 62.
Inside the narrow pipeline compartment: Arkady Uskov’s sketch of the scene, collection of the Chernobyl Museum, Kiev.
Their white overalls: Karpan, Chernobyl to Fukushima, 19.
Akimov barely had enough strength: Uskov, recollections in Kopchinsky and Steinberg, Chernobyl, 19.
Helped from the compartment: Uskov, account in Shcherbak, Chernobyl, 71–72.
Gushed uselessly from shattered pipes: Stolyarchuk, author interview, Kiev, December 2016; Dyatlov, Chernobyl: How It Was, 76; International Atomic Energy Agency, INSAG–7, 45.
Thirty-seven fire crews: Zhores Medvedev, Legacy of Chernobyl, 42.
I’m so young: Stolyarchuk, author interview, 2016.
7. SATURDAY, 1:30 A.M., KIEV
For all the comforts: Vitali Sklyarov, author interview, Kiev, February 2016; author visit to Koncha-Zaspa, February 6, 2016; Vitali Sklyarov, Chernobyl Was . . . Tomorrow (Montreal: Presses d’Amérique, 1993), 21–24.
At fifty, Sklyarov had been a power man: Sklyarov, Chernobyl Was . . . Tomorrow, 8 and 27; Vitali Sklyarov, Sublimation of Time [Сублимация времени] (Kiev: Kvic, 2015), 62–83.
He had been kept informed of problems at the station: In public, Sklyarov naturally stuck to the official line. See chapter 4.
Even in conventional stations: Sklyarov, author interview, 2016; Sklyarov, Chernobyl Was . . . Tomorrow, 27–28; Sklyarov, Sublimation of Time, 496–500.
“There’s been a series”: Sklyarov, author interview, 2016.
Sklyarov immediately called: Sklyarov, author interview, 2016; Vitali Cherkasov, “On the 15th anniversary of the atomic catastrophe: Chernobyl’s sores” [К 15-летию атомной катастрофы: язвы Чернобыля], Pravda, April 25, 2011, www.pravda.ru/politics/25-04-2001/817996-0.
From Kiev: “Special Report” [Спецсообщение], handwritten document signed by Major General V. M. Korneychuk, April 26, 1986, document 1 in File on Special Measures in Pripyat Zone, maintained by the local militsia (Department of Internal Affairs of the Party Committee of Kiev Oblast), archive of the Chernobyl Museum.
“One, two, three, four”: Boris Prushinsky, “This Can’t Be—But It Happened (The First Days After the Catastrophe)” [Этого не может быть—но это случилось (первые дни после катастрофы)], in A. N. Semenov, ed., Chernobyl: Ten Years On. Inevitability or Accident? [Чернобыль. Десять лет спустя. Неизбежность или случайность?] (Moscow: Energoatomizdat, 1995), 308–9. OPAS is the Russian acronym for gruppa okazaniya pomoschi atomnym stantsiyam pri avariyakh, or “group for rendering assistance to nuclear power plants in case of accidents.”
At 2:20 a.m., a call from the central command desk: Read, Ablaze, 94; Sergei Akhromeyev and Georgi Korniyenko, Through the Eyes of a Marshal and a Diplomat: A Critical Look at USSR Foreign Policy Before and After 1985 [Глазами маршала и дипломата: Критический взгляд на внешнюю политику СССР до и после 1985 года] (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniya, 1992), 98–99.
The head of the USSR’s civil defense: Read, Ablaze, 93.
By the time he left Moscow: B. Ivanov, “Chernobyl. Part 1: The Accident” [Чернобыль. 1: Авария], Voennye Znaniya 40, no. 1 (1988), 32; Edward Geist, “Political Fallout: The Failure of Emergency Management at Chernobyl,” Slavic Review 74, no. 1 (Spring 2015): 117.
For the first time in its existence: Leonid Drach, author interview, Moscow, April 2017.
Knew the plant and staff well: Kopchinsky’s job titles at Chernobyl were deputy chief engineer for science (1976–1977) and deputy chief engineer for operations (1977–1979).
Kopchinsky called for a car: Kopchinsky, author interview, 2016.
As the members: Kopchinsky and Steinberg, Chernobyl, 8–9.
Vladimir Marin was still at home: Grigori Medvedev, Truth About Chernobyl, 152–54. In The Legacy of Chernobyl, Zhores Medvedev speculates that Brukhanov had orders to inform Party leaders before anyone else in the event of major industrial accidents (The Legacy of Chernobyl, 47). Piers Paul Read expands upon this in Ablaze, 77.
As dawn broke: Sklyarov, Chernobyl Was . . . Tomorrow, 32; Grigori Medvedev, Truth About Chernobyl, 117.
Recalled from his holiday: The deputy energy minister was Gennadi Shasharin.
Ryzhkov told Mayorets: Nikolai Ryzhkov, interview transcript, 2RR archive file no. 3/7/7, 16.
“There’s nothing left to be cooled!”: Kopchinsky and Steinberg, Chernobyl, 8–9; Kopchinsky, author interview, 2016. Kopchinsky believes that the telephone connection was deliberately cut by the KGB operative on the switchboard at the Chernobyl plant, as part of the effort to keep details of the accident secret.
From his office in Kiev: Sklyarov, Chernobyl Was . . . Tomorrow, 32.
“The station might not be Ukrainian”: Sklyarov, author interview, 2016; Sklyarov, Sublimation of Time, 105.
“What happened? What happened?”: Serhiy Parashyn, author interview, Kiev, November 2016. The scene inside the bunker is also described by Parashyn in Shcherbak, Chernobyl, 75–78.
Samples taken by technicians: Nikolay Karpan, “First Days of the Chernobyl Accident. Private Experience,” www.rri.kyoto-u.ac.jp/NSRG/en/Karpan2008English.pdf, 8–9; Karpan, Chernobyl to Fukushima, 29–30.
By 9:00 a.m.: Alexander Logachev, interview by Taras Shumeyko, Kiev, June 2017; and Alexander Logachev, The Truth [Истина]. The time of Malomuzh’s arrival is specified by Parashyn (in Shcherbak, Chernobyl, 76) as somewhere between seven and nine in the morning on April 26.
Inside Brukhanov’s office: The meeting is detailed by Serafim Vorobyev, the head for civil defense at the plant, in Shcherbak, Chernobyl, 400.
“Sit down”: Ibid.
Malomuzh instructed Brukhanov: Parashyn in Shcherbak, Chernobyl, 76–77; Karpan, Chernobyl to Fukushima, 26.
The document was brief: “On the Accident at the V. I. Lenin Nuclear Power Plant in Chernobyl” [Об аварии на Чернобыльской АЭС имени В. И. Ленина], signed by Viktor Brukhanov, April 26, 1986, classified, in the archive of the Chernobyl Museum. Brukhanov would later say that he knew radiation levels reached at least 200 roentgen per hour around the plant but signed the letter anyway because he “did not read [it] closely” (Brukhanov, court testimony, in Karp
an, Chernobyl to Fukushima, 133).
But it failed to explain: Nikolai Gorbachenko and Viktor Smagin, testimonies in Grigori Medvedev, Truth About Chernobyl, 98–99 and 170; Dyatlov, Chernobyl: How It Was, 51–52.
Just as a military transport plane was lifting off: Prushinsky, “This Can’t Be—But It Happened,” 311–12. The time of the plane’s departure is given as between eight thirty and nine in the morning by G. Shasharin, “The Chernobyl Tragedy” [Чернобыльская трагедия] in Semenov, ed., Chernobyl: Ten Years On, 80.
He usually made it into his office: Ryzhkov, interview transcript, 2RR, 17–18. According to Read, Ablaze, 95, Mayorets’s team departed at ten o’ clock. The text of the decree establishing the commission was provided to the author by Leonid Drach.
In charge of all fuel and energy: Drach, author interview, 2017.
Ryzhkov located him: V. Andriyanov and V. Chirskov, Boris Scherbina [Борис Щербина] (Moscow: Molodaya Gvardiya, 2009), 287.
Academician Valery Legasov: Margarita Legasova, Academician Valery Alekseyevich Legasov [Академик Валерий Алексеевич Легасов] (Moscow: Spektr, 2014), 111–13; Valery Legasov, “On the Accident at Chernobyl AES” [Об аварии на Чернобыльской АЭС], transcript of five cassette tapes dictated by Legasov in early 1988 (henceforth Legasov Tapes), http://lib.web-malina.com/getbook.php?bid=2755, Cassette One, 1–2.
The head of the Communist Party Committee at the Kurchatov Institute: Leonid Bolshov, author interview, Moscow, April 2017.
Aleksandrov liked to drop round: Inga Legasova, author interview, Moscow, April 2017.
Only one man stood in his way: Bolshov, author interview, 2017; Evgeny Velikhov, Strawberries from Chernobyl: My Seventy-Five Years in the Heart of a Turbulent Russia, trans. Andrei Chakhovskoi (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2012), 5–12.
He had traveled abroad: Frank Von Hippel and Rob Goldston, author interview, Princeton, NJ, March 2018; Frank Von Hippel, “Gorbachev’s Unofficial Arms-Control Advisers,” Physics Today 66, no. 9 (September 2013), 41–47.
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