And if we took the accumulated statistics, then the statistics on the operation of RBMK reactors were minimal compared to the VVER. At the same time, he was not always right, he ordered what to do and how to do it. That is why the calculations had to be very precise accounting for all the measures that were taken. This is why the firefighters' actions were not only heroic but also very professional, thoughtful and correct. According to existing sanitary norms, decisions were taken that set the maximum limits [of radiation exposure] that allowed people to live in areas contaminated by certain isotopes. Because the zone was still hot. Now, what else did I want to say about these measures? At the time of the birth of nuclear energy, everything was sensible, because it was a completely new field of science - nuclear physics, neutron physics. And finally, elements such as clay, for example, served as filtering elements meant to prevent part of the radioactive isotopes from getting into the external environment. I must say that both the dosimetry services and military had done great work, however, the most precise information we got came from the radiation institute laboratory that was set up onsite. Well, either 30, 50 or 70 per cent of risk is certainly high. Yes. All the preparatory work was done in a very quick and very organized manner. Slowly, work progressed on alternative reactors. As forty first year, but still in the worst variant. The plan for the experiment was drawn up very poorly, very imprecisely, and not authorised by the specialists by whom it should have been authorised. Moreover, these are specifically the long-living isotopes and the most dangerous: alpha-active. And the city of Pripyat was considerably decontaminated by about the same time when the sarcophagus construction was ending. Legasov: That tomorrow, there will be 25 or more. But nothing of the kind, of course, was done. Based on the simplest estimates that I could make, this commission seemed redundant, because with the system of wells and dams in place, the exchange of radioactivity between the water and silt would not pose any significant danger to the Dnieper sea. In the accident, no one was killed or exposed to radiation. As such, it became clear that lead would be an effective measure. There it was quiet, calm, everything as in ordinary life. But from my point of view, why I wasnt an active supporter of this idea or even active opposer of it is because these jobs would require a lot of machinery to be concentrated in the zone. But it means taking into our own hands issues that fall within the sphere of Civil Defence. About lead, it must be noted that our initial plan was, of course, to put metal, iron shot there. Just before he hangs himself, the scientist passes off a set of tapes to an unseen actor. Say from cows who. Why does he hide them? In other words, I didn't know any big or small event that the Operative group of politburo didn't know about. The first was about the population. They worked very diligently, with great speed and efficiency. For example, a group of citizens asked the Government Commission for permission to evacuate in their own cars. Legasov: Of course, later they were all destroyed. I worked at this plant for about two years. I will not talk about safe reactors because the requirements formulated by Novikov are very accurate. Another thing that surprised me about the Operative group is that it never tried to be secretive about their decisions. While in Chernobyl, I spoke with him thrice on the phone. To this day, I haven't heard of a single case where contaminated water had to be pumped out. At least not at the age that I currently am, just into my fifties. He was not in Moscow at the time but in another region where he was leading a Communist party asset meeting. It seems impossible to stop using them but how can their use be made safe. So General Berdov, who had arrived from Kiev, ordered that all policemen will go to every flat and inform that no one should go outdoors until the next day and should stay at home. But at this time, my comrade postgraduate Viktor Konstantinovich Popov informed me that in Canada, Professor Bartlett had done excellent, staggering chemists work on obtaining a true xenon compound, one of the noble gases. Anatoly Petrovich had a deputy for nuclear energy earlier, Eugeny Petrovich Ryazantsev. It was necessary to design a forced ventilation system for the sarcophagus so that if there was not enough natural ventilation, it would be possible to remove heat by switching on the forced one. Scribbling and formalism have reached such a scale that it is already difficult for science to bear this cross. And conclude this section about the consequences with such normal wordsthat this is a long-term program, that the consequences of this accident will manifest themselves for many, many years, and describe how they will manifest, and that the research front is a broad, so to say, rough plan. New approaches were not welcomed. It contains the above introduction and the original translation of the text, which I will replace with my revised version when I finish it. For example, certain numbers are sent: 1-2-3-4. They really did not like interference in their professional work by outsiders. All this is what I say [will happen] unless the necessary measures are taken. But in the end, I have to say this. So changes to the regulation are introduced for one device but not for another. And they did it. All the indicators are good in its. So I was caught on the road and, after the Politburo, sent back again. The next question arose when it became clear that the crater of the wrecked fourth block was exhausting a lot of radioactive gas. The chairman of the Politburo, M.S.Gorbachev immediately warned me that, at that moment, he was not interested in the culpability and causality of the accident. All the power and all the responsibility must be in the same hands. Nothing got farther than 12 kilometres from the station. An investigation was started. Because I reasoned, for example, that if we say this to the people now, the evacuation will be delayed. [1] After a colleague said his leadership was still needed, he said "No, you dont understand. They accepted it very reluctantly, put it somewhere in their implementation plans for the 90s at the last moment, and began to correct the second mistake. Legasov: Well, that is understandable. I will end here all my manipulations with you, so to saythere is a lot of talk about itthe logic, so the logic behind the decisions that were made is clear to you. It has become clear now that none of the almost 50,000 civilians of Pripyat, that were not at the station after the accident, had received any considerable amount of radiation. Around 150 wells were constructed, both diagnostic and service wells. Well there is an *abridged* transcript at which I've taken the liberty of Google-Translating (not easy due to character limits) to Valery Legasov tape recordings 7.6K views View upvotes 6 Alexander Rumiantsev B.A. In other words, this issue was constantly under his control, as were all the other issues related to the Chernobyl accident. The psychological factors arising out of the liquidation process must, under no circumstances, be forgotten. But, additionally, at least three major design mistakes were made in this device. Because even the best figures today show that, in solar energy, the cost of human labour will be a 100 times more for a unit of power, and the cost of materials a 150 times more, than coal and nuclear power plants. There were 17 projects but only two or three need be described. [citation needed] Extracts from his tapes were published in Pravda in May 1988. And subsequently the construction itself was assigned to the Ministry of Medium Machine Building. I tried to establish such things that would bring the institute together, like the Kurchatov General Council, the institutes general seminar, and setting up various publications that would, on order, sit on the desks of researchers so that they could quickly get all the news from their field. Because he was truly familiar with how stations operated, with the quality of the manufactured equipment, with the problems that sometimes occurred at nuclear stations. At the same time, under my leadership, work developed in the field of safety of chemical production, which also poses a great danger. After the evacuation was completed, the Commission was still in Pripyat for a couple of days, but after that moved to the regional party committee building in Chernobyl and as well as into a military camp. Although it must be said, there were separate cases of looting or intrusions into the zone with the aim of stealing. All the metrics were perfect in his report: the best sovkhozes, the best enterprises, all goals had been achieved. The first concept, the embanked mound, and why we rejected that. This would perform the same task as the lead in places where it was possible to stabilise the temperature by spending excessive energy on the decay of dolomite components. It is necessary to explain the following facts in this order. Do you understand? At the same time, the enormous amount of work done by the dosimetrists, the modest work of young people, say, from Kurchatov Institute led by Shekalov or Borov or Vasiliev, the work of Ryanovskaya [] group led by Petrov, the work of Kombanov who was there many times to test his dust suppression solutions, the logic of all the work, an analysis of the projects that were undertakenthis wasnt described properly. I know that it can be difficult; you need to endure, wait it out. The sarcophagus itself had not yet been begun but the approaches to it had already been concreted. This decision was never implemented, but such words were said. The first assumption was that it is the internal contamination of the building. So, when it became clear that there is not enough of Soviet energy, then Efim Pavlovich Slavsky, the Minister of Medium Machine Building said, There is a way to help the country. Do you understand? [5], For around two years, Legasov worked as an engineer at the Siberian Chemical Combine in the city of Tomsk-7, as a shift supervisor. And so, it's not about the operators . On the other hand, people were contaminated; and their things were contaminated. It needed a fight to, Speaking of the conversations with Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev. In the end it appeared that the GeoChem group was wrong, because their samples were taken in such a condition that they had included plutonium used in weapons coming from nuclear explosion period. All this must be described. Within the last field, the actions were quite simple. [19], In the public sphere, he still kept to the official position that nuclear power was safe. Because originally the plan was to build a dome made entirely of concrete over the wreckage. This is very important. Between 25 and 75 rem is a matter for the local authorities. soon it was necessary to literally fight for the correct implementation of every technological mode. Legasov: RBMK? Preferably information obtained from multiple sources and there were cases when the military had provided information that was different from what the civil services had given. We need to pay a Russian translator to translate the tapes to English. Risks could be taken in this work, and I did risk a lot. An order was issued to prepare the sandbags. The local authorities acted according to these rules, either relocating people or letting them stay, switching to imported food, or declaring the area safe enough to live in and to use the land. This operation was carried out. But then, in a conversation, he said that RBMK reactors are very dangerous. For example, a team from Pravda and the famous head of the science section Gubarev, Odinets, many good Ukranian journalists and documentary filmmakers appeared there. Three or four or up to ten tons of TNT, this is the maximum that can be said. But, I will repeat, this was because unforeseen circumstances cropped up constantly. about the accident at the station "Trimayalen", Show that most likely the reason that led to the accident, has nothing to do with, the events in Chernobyl because of the fundamental difference in the design of, In Kiev, when we got out of the plane, the first thing that caught our eye was the, cavalcade of black government cars and the disturbing crowd of Ukrainian, leaders headed by the Chairman of the CM of Ukraine, Comrade. The No. Except for Nikolai Ivanovich Rizhkov, the Operative group consisted of Yegor Kuzmich Ligachev, comrade Scherbikov, comrade Vorotnikov, comrade Vlasov - the minister of foreign affairs, Vladimir Ivanovich Dolgikh - secretary of the CCCPSU who on behalf of the Central Committee supervised all the events performed within the ChNPP and in the field of atomic power as a whole. Because once we were 10-years late, then before anything, the question arose A line of cased reactors was developed in the world, similar to our water-water energy reactors VVER; like the one that had to be built near Minsk but will not be built now. Basically, they proposed to drop explosives. The work would start very early; at around seven or eight in the morning, the first meeting would be held. They ran away. By the characteristics of the explosion, by the glow, by the dispersion, it is clear that the system had a volumetric-detonation explosion. This is how much they clung to those bloody rods, mechanical, with the help of which And they still cant let go of them, while my proposal for gas-based protection was pushed to sometime in the distant future. All the work was transferred to the revised composition of the first Government Commission (the one led by Boris Yevdokimovich Shcherbina) that had been approved. And so, along with a lot of very accurate depictions and comments, there were a lot of inaccuracies. However, for this particular device, as a matter of fact, there were no simulators. Adamovich: [PART OF AN UNINTELLIGIBLE PHRASE] I understand that it is useless to write. An attempt to pour concrete in an area was unsuccessful because there were rather large gaps through which the concrete flowed to the levels below. But since the original signal was serious, the information was relayed to the Government and it established the Government Commission. So this process took two to three hours. General Berdov, the head of the Ministry of internal affairs of the Republic, had to instate orders about which people could go inside the contaminated areas. For example, different groups in June provided different estimates of the radioactivity that had escaped reactor number 4. It could have been hot graphite blocks that had remained in place - seeing as graphite burns evenly, generating whitish burning products as an ordinary chemical reaction. But usually, Ryzhkov and Dolgikh were in constant communication. But my participation in the events at Chernobyl was certainly justified because there was no reactor anymore, just its remnants which is my direct speciality. It would enclose the object in what is called a containment (maybe an underground option or other possible engineering options), but the most important for reliability is to have a system that does not rely on a geographical site. Shcherbina assigned the duties. And it was such an unforgettable scene as one drove up to Skazochniy. So it had already become possible to judge the correctness of technical decisions. Adamovich: But if left without supervision, can it, Legasov: Oh, about leaving it unattended, I will talk later separately. As far as I can imagine, but this is within my ability, Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev, I spoke with him three times. It will be the largest chemical accident in history. Because there really was a fire. From this perspective, there was no understanding of the steps that needed to be taken, neither from station personnel nor from the Ministry of Energy. The gas-cooled reactors had been tried out by the Germans. The iron would oxidize and the temperatures would rise further still. These mistakes themselves are monstrous. Well, because no one knew exactly what had happened. After some considerations, the Government Commission allowed them to use their cars. It was wrong. But it was reported in such a way that one of them died from physical trauma while the second from chemical burns. He must be the designer, the engineer and the science supervisor. And so the design of the new city of Slavutych began; the city that would replace Pripyat as the permanent residence for the power engineers. 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valery legasov tapes transcript