Foreword:
I have published this article before, but now IO decided to use it as a beginning of series of articles on nuclear energy.
On April 26, 38 years ago, the Chernobyl disaster happened.
It was a disaster, indeed, as 115 thousand people were evicted from the exclusion zone. More than 600 thousand people took part in the liquidation of the accident. More than 200 thousand square kilometers were polluted, 5 million hectares of land were taken out of use. The territories of Ukraine, Belarus (according to some data, 20% of the area of this country), and Russia were subjected to significant contamination. In addition, Chernobyl radiation has been detected in northern and western Europe, as well as off the coast of North America.
According to data from free sources, about 9% of world electro generation in 2022 was of nuclear source. And despite the share of electricity generated by nuclear power plants being reduced, the volume of electricity, generated this way is approximately the same – at about 2.7 TWh per year. There was a slight decline in generation after year 2011, as Japan made a step back from using NPPs, but other countries, like Belarus, are starting to use NPPs as a source of generation. But I will not eleborate on this topic here, it is a subject for separate article, which I’m working on now.
Nowadays, the leading role on this market is held by Rosatom which is now building 22 energy blocks in 7 countries. But everything could have been different after Chernobyl. Therefore, instead of writing a commemorative post about the tragedy, I decided to thank the person, who saved Soviet (and Russian) nuclear industry.
Back in 1986 Valery Alekseyevich Legasov was named Person of the Year in Europe and was included in the list of the top 10 scientists in the world. After Chernobyl disaster he was actively participating in liquidation of consequences in place, but later he had to advocate the USSR at IAEA special session in Vienna dedicated to Chernobyl. And he won.
Born on 1 September 1936 in Tula, Russian SFSR, into a family of civil workers. He attended secondary school in Kursk. In 1949–1954, he attended School No. 56 in Moscow and graduated with a gold medal.
The future academician came to School N 56th in 1949, in the 6th grade. Then the school was male, built according to new unique project. A shooting range was located in the basement, and a weather station on the roof.
- Their release in 1954 was called "gold." 8 students graduated from a school with a gold medal, including Valery Legasov. His graduation was recognized as the best in the city,”- says history teacher Christian Molotov. - He was a born leader. As an eighth grader, he became the secretary of the Komsomol organization of the school.
After school, as a gold medalist, he could choose any university, but went to “Mendeleevka”, at the Physics and Chemical Faculty of Moscow D. Mendeleev Institute of Chemical Technology (Now D. Mendeleev University of Chemical Technology of Russia (MUCTR)), which trained specialists for the nuclear industry and energy.
Valery Legasov, who presented a brilliant thesis, was proposed to stay in postgraduate studies, but he decided to go to the Siberian Chemical Plant, where Plutonium for nuclear weapons was developed. A large group of graduates went to Seversk for him.
At 36, he became a Doctor of Chemical Sciences, in 45 - a full member of the Academy of Sciences. For his work on the synthesis of chemical compounds of noble gases, he was awarded the title of laureate of state and Lenin prizes.
In 1984, he became the first deputy director of the Kurchatov nuclear energy institution, and two years later the Chernobyl disaster broke out.
On April 26, 1986, by order of the Council of Ministers of the USSR No. 830, Valery Legasov as part of the Government Commission, was sent to Chernobyl (was allocated in the city of Pripyat, two kilometers from the collapse of the 4th Chernobyl block).
On the spot it turned out that two explosions occurred sequentially on the 4th block of the station during a freelance test of the operation of the turbine unit in the free exit mode. The reactor was completely destroyed.
The experience of eliminating consequences of such accidents in the world did not exist. Until then.
Legasov, who possessed service impudence and fearlessness, on an army helicopter got to the “ebrid”, a pipe of nuclear power plant, of an emergency fourth block and saw that there was a glow... To check if the work out of short-lived radioactive isotopes, an academician on an armored personnel carrier approached a 4th block. Got out of the car and made the necessary measurements.
Thanks to Valery Legasov, it was possible to establish that the measurements of neutron sensors about the ongoing nuclear reaction are unreliable, as they reacted to the most powerful gamma radiation. In fact, the boiler was “silent”, the reaction stopped, but there was a burning of reactor graphite, which was as much as 2500 tons.
To prevent further heating of the remains of the reactor, as well as reduce radioactive aerosol emissions into the atmosphere Legasov suggested throwing mixture of bromine -containing substances, lead, and dolomite clay on the reactor zone from helicopters with. He made all necessary calculations to justify this.
To cover the reactor, helicopter pilots dropped more than 5 thousand tons of all kinds of materials into it. Valery Legasov himself took flights on helicopter, being over a collapse site 5-6 times a day. The on -board radiometer with a maximum scale of 500 x -rays per hour went off scale ...
Legasov worked as obsessed, he often left the dosimeter in the locker room, did not trump the radiographs.
On May 5, he was invited to Moscow to a meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU. The academician's wife, Margarita Mikhailovna, recalled that Valery Alekseevich returned to Moscow for the first time on May 5. Thin, bald, with a characteristic “Chernobyl tan” - a darkened face and hands. He admitted to his relatives that at the scene of the disaster there were no respirators, supplies of clean water, medicines, clean reserve food products, or iodine preparations for the necessary prevention.
From tape recordings dictated by Academician Legasov:
“At the station there is such unpreparedness, such carelessness, such fear. Like 1941, but even worse. With the same Brest, with the same courage, with the same despair, with the same unpreparedness..."
On the same day, May 5, as soon as the Politburo meeting ended, Valery Legasov was again sent to the scene of the accident. He was the only one from the first composition of the government commission to continue working in its second composition.
He returned home on May 13 with a hoarse voice, incessant cough and insomnia.
On May 13, he attended a meeting of the government commission; Inga Valerievna [daughter] in her interview to KП:
After returning from Chernobyl, his gaze became extinct. He lost a lot of weight. Because of severe stress, I could not eat. He understood the scale of the tragedy and could not think about anything other than the Chernobyl disaster. A few years before this terrible accident at a meeting of the physical section of the USSR Academy of Sciences, when there was a discussion of the construction of nuclear reactors, the father proposed to make a protective cap for them. His proposal was not taken seriously. They said what, they say, you have an attitude towards nuclear physics? After the Chernobyl disaster, he understood that if then he had enough resources to prove his case, then the consequences of the accident would not be so terrible.
In June, he accompanied the Secretary General of the CPSU Central Committee to Hungary in case there are any explanations for the situation on the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. During June, July, Augustus the report was being prepared, comparison and check the numbers characterizing the size and consequences of the thermal explosion of the reactor of the 4th Chernobyl block.
It was not he who was supposed to go to the IAEA meeting either; the head of state - Gorbachev was supposed to report on what happened in Chernobyl. But, as far as I know, Mikhail Sergeevich said that the scientist who took part in eliminating the consequences of the accident must go. A whole group of specialists worked on the report. He was preparing before our eyes. My father often took documents home. Scientists and specialists stayed overnight at our house for several days. My father checked all the numbers many times. He personally had to make sure that they were all absolutely true. The report was very detailed and very honest.
Told Inga Valerievna.
In August 1986, a special meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was held in Vienna.
Inga Valerievna said:
When my father boarded the plane, Soviet diplomats in Vienna warned him that the situation was quite unfriendly and that he would be greeted poorly. The international community is negatively opposed both to the country and to the speaker. They were waiting for Gorbachev. But when they found out that Legasov, who worked at the site of the Chernobyl disaster, had arrived, many more people gathered.
From August 25 to 29 more than 500 technical experts, including the largest energy specialists, atomic physics, safety and medicine from 62 countries and 21 international organizations gathered to the meeting, the Soviet delegation led by the first Deputy Director of the Institute of Atomic Energy named after I.V. Kurchatov by academician Valery Legasov, presented a detailed report on the accident in Chernobyl.
Inga Valerievna remembers:
When my father boarded the plane, Soviet diplomats in Vienna warned him that the situation was quite unfriendly and that he would be greeted poorly. The international community is negatively opposed both to the country and to the speaker. They were waiting for Gorbachev. But when they found out that Legasov, who worked at the site of the Chernobyl disaster, had arrived, many more people gathered.
My father said that at first the hall was buzzing, those present were shouting something from their seats. But starting from the 15th minute of the report, there was deathly silence in the hall. They listened to Legasov with bated breath. And they wrote down the numbers behind him. The report lasted 5 hours, and my father answered questions for another hour. Without any break. He saw his main task not to justify the Soviet Union, not to hide some information, but, on the contrary, to explain to the world community how to behave in such situations. Even then he had the idea of creating a security institute.
remembers his daughter.
It was expected that experts would demand from the Soviet Union to compensate for the damage from the radioactive cloud, which after the accident rushed to Europe. The radionuclides of iodine and cesium were spaced on a significant part of the European territory.
Here is an eyewitness testimony:
“At the end of the summer of 1986, meeting me on the stairs at the institute, Academician Legasov called me into his office. Turning over the paper lying on the table, he warned: what I was about to see was not intended for anyone’s eyes or ears... In front of me lay the future scenario of the IAEA special session in Vienna dedicated to Chernobyl, which some of our “friends” had came up with in advance. They assumed that the Soviet Union would not say anything detailed in its report on the Chernobyl accident. Since these reactors [РБМК-1000] are military-type reactors, everything will be classified and the report will only last half an hour. Then the speeches were described - the content of each was conveyed in one or two phrases.
At the end there was a draft IAEA resolution: to close all high-power nuclear reactors in the Soviet Union, to pay huge reparations to countries affected by radioactivity, to ensure the presence of foreign observers at every nuclear reactor of the Union. I looked at Legasov. He nodded: “Yes. And we will need to break this through.”
And how he began to break! He involved the most prominent specialists in writing the report. There was nothing hidden in it... As a result, the ministerial authorities wrote a resolution on the report that it should be destroyed, and the authors prosecuted. Then Legasov went to defend his point of view to Ryzhkov. He allowed to report...
Legasov ensured that the scientists who developed the RBMK (who were absolutely not allowed to travel abroad!) were sent with him to Vienna. And in August 1986, he gave a presentation that lasted almost five hours. When those present had questions, the scientists whom Legasov had brought to Vienna rose from their seats. They spoke so forcefully and convincingly that IAEA experts wrote down every word. As a result, not a single point from that “scenario” was included in the resolution. In the evening, when Valery Alekseevich arrived from Vienna, I was impatiently waiting for him in the lobby of the institute, afraid to miss him. Legasov flew in and shouted “Victory!” to me as he went. Knowing that he will go to the Politburo, I decided to wait for him.
Finally, Legasov returned, and I understood that he was completely crushed. He looked at me and said: “They don’t understand anything and didn’t even understand what we managed to do. I'm going on vacation." He went on vacation and soon fell seriously ill, the huge doses he received took their toll.
Historian Boris Yakemenko says that it is known that Gorbachev did not like Legasov. In the fall of 1987, a list of Chernobyl survivors nominated for the title of Hero was compiled, and Alexandrov at a meeting of the institute had already congratulated him on the award. And later it turned out that Legasov was deleted from the list at the direction of Gorbachev. And this despite the fact that all those who worked with him in Chernobyl believed that he should be given not even a Hero of Socialist Labor, but a Hero of the Soviet Union - he risked himself so often... Perhaps the fact that Legasov, and not Gorbachev, according to polls, was named man of the year in 1986. This also did not add to the love of his superiors.”
The academician came to the emergency Chernobyl nuclear power plant 7 times. He was not feeling well: he was constantly sick, had a dry cough and headaches. His immune system was weakened. However, he continued to work 12 hours a day.
On September 1, 1986, Valery Alekseevich turned 50 years old.
Soon, doctors diagnosed Valery Legasov with radiation pancreatitis, stage 4 radiation sickness. Myelocytes were found in the blood, and it became clear that the bone marrow was affected. And on April 27, 1988, on the second anniversary of the Chernobyl accident he was found hanged in his home office. The official version is suicide.
On April 28, Legasov was supposed to announce to the government the data of his own investigation into the causes of the Chernobyl disaster. According to some reports, some of the recordings that Valery Alekseevich read into the recorder were erased.
I don’t know what was erased.” The archive that was in the family has been preserved. There are many transcripts of recordings on the Internet that actually belong to the father, but there are also those that have nothing to do with him,
says Inga Valerievna.
The version of incitement to suicide was also checked, but it was not confirmed. The investigation concluded: Valery Legasov committed suicide in a state of depression.
After the death of the academician, Margarita Mikhailovna [wife] requested an official document about the radiation dose received by her husband in Chernobyl. Valery Alekseevich’s “account” was 100 rem, while the maximum permissible dose for liquidators was 25.
Only ten years after the accident, in September 1996, President Boris Yeltsin posthumously awarded Valery Legasov the title of Hero of Russia.
“The Golden Star of the Hero is kept in the Legasov family.
This is the story of a really outstanding man, who has not only saved Soviet (further Russian nuclear industry), but also preserved nuclear energy for next generations.
Now, as I have already mentioned, Rosatom is the most successful player in the word in nuclear sphere. But experiance gained in this tradegy was never wasted:
After the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, the domestic nuclear industry has undergone radical changes, which expressed in the creation of new security systems and nuclear reactors.
This was announced in an interview with RT by Vladimir Asmolov, adviser to the Director General of Rosatom, chairman of the Scientific and Technical Council (NTS) No. 1 of the State Corporation. According to him, by the end of the 21st century, Russia should switch to a two -component nuclear structure, which will consist of reactors on thermal and on fast neutrons.
After the Chernobyl accident, a global analysis of the entire situation in the nuclear industry was carried out. The lessons of Chernobyl were fully learned. The knowledge base about processes and phenomena has expanded significantly, on the basis of which detailed calculation codes have been developed. Strict safety standards and qualitatively new technical means of ensuring them have appeared. The qualifications of the personnel have also risen to a significantly higher level.
This is the story of a hero who saved nuclear industry. Long memory to Valery Alekseevich Legasov.
Wlire writing article information from open sources was used.
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Excellent. A gigantic tragedy and a titanic grandness in taking responsibility, rendering a huge contribution to humanity.
Thank you! Thank the hero!