CHORNOBYL: THE FIFTEENTH ANNIVERSARY

Turning the pages back...

April 25-28, 1986

Several books have been published about the Chornobyl nuclear accident since the tragic explosion 15 years ago. Below is a montage of passages from three such books describing the events leading up to and immediately following the catastrophe.

"It all began on Friday, April 25, 1986, with an experiment on the fourth unit at the Chornobyl nuclear power station. Its purpose was to improve safety - more precisely to insure a constant supply of electricity to the pumps that circulated cooling water around the reactor's uranium fuel rods. Should these pumps' normal electricity source - the reactor's turbine generators - fail, the water would stop circulating, and the fuel rods would overheat, melt and explode. Ironically, an experiment designed to avoid such an event actually caused it to occur."

"The Chernobyl Disaster: The True Story of a Catastrophe - An Unanswerable Indictment of Nuclear Power," Viktor Haynes & Marko Bojcun. London: The Hogarth Press, 1988.

* * *

"At 1 a.m. on April 26, 1986, as a result of crude pressure from the deputy chief engineer, Dyatlov, the power of the reactor in No. 4 unit had been stabilized at 200 megawatts (thermal). The reactor continued to be poisoned by decay products; a further increase in power was impossible; the operational reactivity reserve was far below the level prescribed in the rules and, as I have pointed out, stood at 18 rods, according to Toptunov, the senior reactor control engineer. Those figures were provided by the Skala computer 7 minutes before the AZ (emergency power reduction) button was pressed.

"At this time, of course, the reactor was out of control and in danger of exploding. Thus, pressing the AZ button at any of the moments remaining until the historic point X would have led to a fatal uncontrollable power surge. There was no way of influencing the reactivity.

"Seventeen minutes and 40 seconds were now left before the explosion - a long time, practically an eternity. A historic eternity. Thought travels at the speed of light. Throughout those 17 minutes and 40 seconds one could think back over an entire lifetime, over the whole history of mankind. Unfortunately the workers at Chornobyl had time only to unleash the explosion."

"The Truth About Chernobyl," by Grigori Medvedev. USA: Basic Books, Inc., 1991.

* * *

"On April 28, 1986, at 21:00 hours, Radio Moscow made a terse announcement:

"'An accident has occurred at the Chornobyl nuclear power plant - one of the atomic reactors has been damaged. Measures are being undertaken to liquidate the consequences of the accident. Those affected are being given aid, and a government commission has been created.'

"The announcement came about eight hours after Swedish officials discovered high levels of radiation on the monitoring equipment at a nuclear power plant near Stockholm.

"... The USSR Council of Ministers statement was reported in the major Kyiv-based newspapers, but not in positions of prominence. Pravda Ukrainy placed it at the foot of page three, beneath an article about two sickly pensioners who were trying to acquire a telephone in their homes. Robitnycha Hazeta gave the statement a similar location, this time below the Soviet soccer league tables and reports about a chess competition.

"In the evening TASS made a second announcement which gave the following details: an accident had occurred at the Chornobyl nuclear plant, which is located 130 kilometers north of Kyiv; a government commission, headed by Borys Shcherbyna, deputy chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers, had been established, which included 'heads of ministries and departments.' The accident had occurred 'in one of the areas of the fourth power-generating unit and resulted in the destruction of part of the structural elements of the building housing the reactor.' Two people had been killed during the accident. The remaining three reactors had been shut down, and the residents at the reactor site [Prypiat] and three neighboring population points had been evacuated."

"Chernobyl & Nuclear Power In the USSR," by David R. Marples. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1986.

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, April 22, 2001, No. 16, Vol. LXIX

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