On April 26, 1986, I turned seven years old. It was Saturday. Friends came to visit us and they gave me a yellow umbrella with a letter ornament. I have never had this, so I was happy and really looking forward to the rain.
It rained the next day, April 27th. But my mother did not allow me to go under it. And she looked scared. That was the first time I heard the heavy word "Chernobyl".

In those years, we lived in a military town in the small village of Sarata in the Odessa region. Chernobyl is far away. But it's still scary. Then cars with liquidators pulled out of our unit in that direction. Another heavy word, the meaning of which I learned much later.

Of our neighbors, who with their bare hands closed the world from the deadly atom, only a few survived today.

In 2006, there were more of these people. A week before my birthday, I received a task to talk to the remaining liquidators and collect the most interesting episodes. By that time I already worked as a journalist and lived in Rostov-on-Don.

And so I found my heroes - the head of the anti-shock department of the North Caucasian Civil Defense Regiment Oleg Popov, Hero of Russia Captain II rank Anatoly Bessonov and sanitary doctor Viktor Zubov. These were completely different people who were united by only one thing - Chernobyl.

I'm not sure they are all alive today. After all, eleven years have passed. But I have records of our conversations. And, from which the blood is still cold.

History first. abnormal summer.

On May 13, 1986, Oleg Viktorovich Popov, head of the anti-shock department of the North Caucasian Civil Defense Regiment, had a birthday. Relatives congratulated, friends called, even a messenger came. True, instead of a gift, he brought a summons - tomorrow morning he had to come to the military registration and enlistment office.

We quietly celebrated, and the next day I went on the agenda. I didn’t even suspect where they were calling me, so I put on a light shirt, took money to buy milk home. But my milk never came. I returned only at the end of the summer, Oleg Popov told me.

He remembered Chernobyl for its abnormal temperature. During the day already in May it was under forty, at night it was so cold that the tooth did not fall on the tooth. As protection, the liquidators were given canvas suits. Heavy and not breathable. Many could not stand it - they fell from heat strokes. But it was necessary to "remove the radiation", so the suits were removed and liquidated, as best they could - with bare hands.

People started getting sick. The main diagnosis is pneumonia.

Then I had another shock. We were delivered boxes with red crosses - medicines. We opened them, and there - beyond words - something that had lain in warehouses for decades. The bandages fell apart from time to time, the pills were yellow, the expiration date on the package was barely visible. In the same boxes were gynecological devices, devices for measuring growth. And that's all for the liquidators. What to do? How to treat people? The only salvation is the hospital, - Oleg Viktorovich recalled.

The fight went on day and night. And not only with the reactor, but also with the system, and with themselves.

On the site "Chernobylets Don" about Popov there is such a reference:

“In the 30-kilometer zone, I worked in my specialty, I had to treat and put on my feet mainly soldiers and officers of my regiment. There was a lot of work, and Oleg Viktorovich was actually the main person responsible for the health of the regiment's personnel. After all, soldiers and officers were called in a hurry, often without a medical examination. Popov O.V. recalls that there were cases of conscription for training camps with peptic ulcer and other diseases. Some even had to be sent to a hospital or a hospital. And, of course, it was possible to provide psychological assistance to soldiers and officers, because it is clear that there was no full-time psychologist in the unit. His work in the regiment was appreciated, and since then he has retained the warmest memories of his comrades-in-arms, of the commander of the regiment N.I. Kleimenov. and officers of the unit.
After the completion of special gatherings and returning home, Oleg Viktorovich, by profession and work, treated the liquidators of the Chernobyl accident and was always ready to help them in word and deed.
He has government awards: the Order of the Badge of Honor and the Order of Courage.

Only in May 1986, and only from the Rostov region, about thirty thousand liquidators arrived in Chernobyl. Many returned with a load of 200. Many carried a poison charge in their blood.

Oleg Popov brought leukemia to the Don. He came with tests that would not have accepted him even in an oncology center - 2,800 antibodies in the blood.

But I didn't plan to give up. Decided to live. And he lived - studied chess, English, I was drawn into photography, began to travel, wrote poetry, designed websites. And, of course, he helped his own - guys like me, who were sent to this inferno, - he said.

I typed the name of Oleg Viktorovich Popov on the Internet. And I was happy to discover that he also lives in Rostov, maintains his own website, his photographic art is valued with high awards, and his literary work has many admirers. This year, according to the website of the regional government, the liquidator was awarded another award. And in 2006, the head of the anti-shock department of the North Caucasian Civil Defense Regiment, Oleg Popov, was awarded the Order of Courage.
Then he told me that he thinks that he is not worth this high award.

The real heroes are those guys who were at the reactor, erecting the sarcophagus with their bare hands, doing, so to speak, decontamination. It was a criminal stupidity that claimed thousands of lives. But then who thought about it? Who knew that it was impossible to bury, neutralize, bury radioactive substances by digging up stadiums, washing the roofs and windows of houses?! At that moment, there was nothing else ...

The second story. Sweet roads of death.

Memories sanitary doctor Viktor Zubov a little different. When they first announced the collection to eliminate the accident, he joked that they would go to fight against tanks with sabers. It turned out that he was not mistaken. In fact, it was.
On the morning of June 21, sanitary doctors from the Rostov region left for Pripyat.

At first, to be honest, we did not understand the full scale of the tragedy. We drove up to Pripyat, and there - beauty! Greenery, birds sing, mushrooms are visible in the forests - not visible. The huts are so neat and clean! And if you don't think about the fact that every plant is saturated with death, then - paradise! Viktor Zubov recalled. “But in the camp where we arrived, for the first time I felt fear - they told me that the doctor, in whose place I was sent, had committed suicide. Nerves gone. Couldn't handle the pressure.

Of the vivid memories of Zubov - sweet roads. Ordinary roads that were sprinkled with sugar syrup to forge deadly dust under a sweet crust. But it was all in vain. After the very first car, the sugar ice cracked and the poison flew into the faces of the liquidators who followed.

We still didn't fully understand what we were going to do. And on the spot it turned out that we had few patients. And all seventy doctors came for decontamination,” he explained. - Of the protective equipment were an apron and a respirator. They worked with shovels. Bath in the evening. What they were doing? They washed the windows of houses, helped at nuclear power plants. We slept in rubber tents and ate local food. By that time we already understood everything. But there was no choice, hoping for the best.

Viktor Zubov spent six months in Chernobyl. At home, the doctor realized that now he, a young man, has become a regular client of the clinic and the owner of a bunch of diseases. You will get tired of listing the diagnoses.

At the time of our interview (let me remind you, it was 11 years ago), Victor was living on medication. But he did well - he played the beatles button accordion, walked with his grandchildren, made something around the house. I tried to live so that it was not excruciatingly painful.

To be continued

The seventh, the eighth are in touch, I see a woman with a child, they are running away from someone.
- Eighth, I understand you, how old does the child look?
- Three years, no more, yes, the poor fellows got there, the seventh, maybe it's worth intervening?
- Are you out of your mind? Do you want to go to the tribunal?
- But...
- Set aside, better report the situation.
- Your mother, some creatures are running after them, they look like zombies, but they move too fast!
Probably bloodsuckers.
- Maybe so ... (Long pause) Sir, they cornered them ... They tore it, tore it, oh, hell ... - Vomiting sounds were heard on that line.
- Eighth, are you okay there?
- Not really, they tore the mother, and then ... (Short pause) the child.
- Okay, eighth, go back to base...

I was awakened by the voice of Sergei, informing me that it was time to get up.
Pulling myself up, muttering something, I looked out the window of our UAZ.
According to the checkpoint that stood in front, I realized that we were approaching the entrance to Chernobyl.
We were driving on a special assignment, namely: we needed to find the "Brave Link" team, so they let us through without problems, later we were already passing by some kind of kindergarten, abandoned old houses appeared ahead, overgrown with moss and so on. Then we drove past the very center of Chernobyl, I saw a picture of the morning Pripyat: Houses that were ready to collapse at any moment, the old Energetik building and many others.
But now we were already approaching the second temporary post, where a detachment was supposed to be waiting for us, which was supposed to follow us to the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.
But when we drove up, my whole detachment and I noticed that there was no sentry ahead and no one at all.
- Strange... - I said quietly.
Having stopped, Andrey, our guide, came out first, then the rest (including me).
Going inside, where the detachment itself was waiting for us, a terrible picture appeared to us: There were traces of blood on the walls, body parts were scattered throughout the room, the head of one of the soldiers was hung on some kind of hook.
Because of this whole picture, my partner Sergei immediately vomited, and I could hardly restrain myself from throwing out yesterday's leftover food.

All this made us run out into the street with panic and fear.
But as soon as I ran out into the street (I ran out last), something fell on me, it made me pass out for a while, the last thing I saw was how my friend and partner was lifted up by some kind of creature, and the other cut off one limb with one stroke of its paw. After that I lost consciousness.

Soldiers, it's time to move! - shouted the commander of the "Brave Link" detachment.
The whole detachment slowly got up and they all moved towards the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, because there was very little left before it ...
- Stop. The commander said softly.
The detachment stopped, some kind of blinking appeared ahead on the approach to the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.
It turned out to be a blue ball. He quickly approached the group.
Before the commander had time to give the command to run, he instantly increased in size and "ate" the entire detachment.

Sir, this is an AN-15, the "Brave Link" detachment never reached the indicated point.
- What an infection, no matter what detachment we send, everyone disappears, even no traces remain!
- Sir, wait, the radar noticed that they were at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, only underground!
- What?! Are you joking?
- No Sir!
- Here... Well, if the radar sees them, it means that they can still be returned. Send a detachment, let them follow the route.

Pavlov, wounded here, doctor urgently!

I woke up in a room, lying on a hospital bed.
Nearby, on a nearby bunk, lay a man, about thirty-five years old.
Suddenly, a girl, about twenty-three years old, pretty with black hair and a snow-white smile, looked into the ward.
- Woke up! - Shouted the girl.
After that, a man in a white coat entered the ward (as I already understood, I was in the hospital).
- Well, finally, and we thought he died. The doctor smiled.
- Where I am? I asked in a hoarse voice.
- And you, if you can call it that, at my base.
I looked at the doctor in bewilderment.
- Well, what are you looking at? My guys found you near the checkpoint and took you away... But you were lucky, your other friends were torn to pieces. - Mikhail, as it was written on a decrepit tablet near his chest, slapped me on the shoulder and gave me brand new military clothes and told me to get dressed.
Having dressed, I went out into the corridor, following Mikhail, we went to his "office".
There he gave me a fresh carcass, and after giving me vodka he said:
- The base is mine, it has been standing here since the year 2000, and over these twelve years there have been so many raids on it that the world has never seen it. Mutants, military, marauders, bandits, many others. - Michael, lighting a cigarette, continued:
- But for now, we are holding on, since childhood I dreamed of visiting here, so I grew up and collected a lot of money and went here. Hired fighters, nurses, etc. Then he began to help people like you, this zone is full of secrets ... - He was interrupted by a guy who burst in with the words:
- Michael, there it is, mutants!
Michael's face showed concern, but calmer.
- Yours to the left! Not a day without rest! - After these words, Mikhail took the machine gun and went somewhere with the guy, I followed them.
We were approaching a door, near it stood a man with a machine gun and a few more with machine guns like Mikhail's.
- Well, as always Michael!
- And do not say, they felt the pigs, the smell of flesh and fled!
And at this time, various sounds were heard outside the door: the patter of hooves, a roar, grunts.
- Take positions, now trample! - The command was given by the one with whom Mikhail spoke.
Everyone who was present took up positions, Mikhail gave me an AK-47, and I, hiding with one of the soldiers behind a barricade of bags, began to wait, deathly silence hung.

The silence was interrupted by blows, either with hooves or massive paws. A look of excitement appeared on Mikhail's face: speaking of the fact that such raids had already become a habit for him.
Further, the knock was muffled, but not for long. After a moment of silence, the door was knocked down with one blow.
A huge massive body appeared in the opening, bending down to go inside, it stood up to its full height, a terrible creature looked at us with its empty eyes. I froze in horror.
- Bloodsuckers? - Someone asked quietly.
His question was answered:
- No, it's something else.
After that, the creature rushed at one of ours, since it was possible to shoot it with one hit in the head.
But the horror did not end, after her several more monsters ran inside, three tore to pieces two soldiers, and the rest, gutting their intestines and tearing their limbs, tore another to pieces.
Michael gave the order to retreat. I ran after him, where he led me through the emergency exit and took me out into the street, ordered me to get into the car and leave, and he ran back with the words:
- Get out of here as soon as possible, I have to stay here.
After I got into the car and gave gas, I rushed away, behind me I heard heartbreaking screams ...

Arthur Shigapov

ISBN 978-5-699-38637-6

Introduction

What you see, write in a book and send it to the churches in Asia...

So, write what you saw, and what is, and what will happen after this.

Apocalypse 1

Before you - perhaps the most unusual of all the guidebooks published in the world. He talks about how to go where you don't need to go. Where no “sane” person will go voluntarily. There, where there was a catastrophe of a universal scale, completely discarding the usual ideas about good and evil. The accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant changed the existing system of coordinates and became a kind of Rubicon for the whole country. This is a symbol of a new troubled time, when the usual way of life is collapsing, and it is replaced by a cold void and border posts with barbed wire on yesterday's busy roads. The decline of one of the great empires of the 20th century did not begin in Belovezhskaya Pushcha in 1991, or even in the Baltic States, which declared itself free three years earlier. It all started here, on a warm April night in 1986, when a radioactive rainbow rose into the sky over Ukraine, and with it over the entire country. Chernobyl is a zone of transition to a new time, where the ruins of the Soviet past are absorbed by a new environment, perceptible only with special devices. This is no longer a future post-nuclear era, but a post-human era.

It is all the more interesting to look beyond the edge of being and realize the scale of the tragedy that befell this once fertile land and the people who inhabited it.

"Are you crazy? Are you tired of living? If not about yourself, then think about the children!”

How many times have I heard these exhortations from relatives and friends, going on another "extreme" trip, be it the mountains of Afghanistan, the vast Iraqi villages or the ruins of the Lebanese capital immediately after the Israeli bombing. A long time ago, when the trees were big and the soda from the machine was real, we young boys climbed dark basements and abandoned dusty attics in search of imaginary dangers. Years have passed, and now matured stalkers - adventurers on their own head - can be seen in the most uncomfortable corners of the planet, such as the Somali wilderness or a pass in mountainous Chechnya. But every time the danger can be seen or felt, whether it's fog on the famous "road of death" in Bolivia, which winds serpentine over the abyss, or bearded Taliban with machine guns at the ready, from which I once had to flee in the Afghan gorge of Tora Bora. The Chernobyl enemy is invisible, inaudible, intangible. It is recognized only by the crackle of the dosimeter, and this crackle dispassionately announces that the enemy is already here and has begun his destructive work. You cannot negotiate with him, you cannot pity him, he does not take payoffs and does not warn of an attack. You just need to know what he is, where he is hiding and how dangerous he is. Together with knowledge, fear recedes, the fear of radiation disappears - the so-called radiophobia. There is a desire to refute the philistine ideas about the Chernobyl zone as the territory of two-headed mutants and birch trees with fir cones instead of leaves.

This guide will answer many of your questions. It will help to gain an understanding of what happened here 23 years ago and how events developed further. He will talk about the dangers, imaginary and real. He will become a guide to the most interesting places associated with the accident, and will tell you how to get around obstacles - real radiation and artificial ones that timid officials piled up.

On one of my visits to the Zone, I rode incognito in an electric train carrying workers to the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. “Welcome to hell!” read the inscription on the wall of an abandoned house a few kilometers from the final stop. What for some means an extreme foray into the radioactive hell, for others is just a daily commute to and from work. For some, exceeding the daily allowable dose of radiation is a reason for panic, but for someone it is a good reason for taking time off. Shift of coordinates or a new post-accident reality? Read this book and then try to see everything with your own eyes. Good luck with your travels!

Although this guide is out of line with ordinary guides to "city-countries", its structure is simple and clear. First, the author will introduce you to the history of the Chernobyl accident, and not from the moment the fatal atomic chain was launched, but much earlier - when decisions were only being made to build a new energy monster. This narrative least of all resembles a dry chronology of events and is rather a story-remembrance of the past, present and future. Only by realizing the scale and depth of the tragedy that has occurred, you can make a decision about the trip, otherwise it will turn into wasted time and money.

Radiation is invisible and intangible, its danger can be assessed only by clearly understanding its structure, dimensions and methods of exposure, as well as by owning measuring instruments. To do this, your attention is presented to the appropriate section, which tells about the basics of radiation safety in a simple and accessible form. There is also a list of actually sold dosimeters. The author is in no way connected with the manufacturers and considers only popular models tested by many stalkers, whose advantages and disadvantages were discussed in detail on specialized sites.

The practical part included the most interesting places, significant from a historical and visual point of view. The cost of excursions and trips are real, published on the websites of firms, clarified through negotiations or paid by the author personally. The cost of hotels is given as of the summer of 2009, their description is the author's. In the "Informpracticum" section you will find all the necessary timetables and prices for travel by trains, electric trains and buses leading to and around the Exclusion Zone. The names of some villages and settlements are given in Russian and local interpretation.

In general, the author conceived this guide as an interesting and useful book for the widest range of readers who are going to visit the site of the tragedy or are simply interested in Chernobyl issues. The monotonous scientific and academic style is left for other, specialized publications; it also expresses a deeply personal position, gained through suffering in the course of perfect travels, studied literature, viewed photo and video materials, meetings with employees of the nuclear power plant and the Exclusion Zone, self-settlers and representatives of state bodies operating in the resettled territories.

Story. How it was, how it is and how it will be

In the beginning was the Word...

Chernobyl(lat.- Artemisia vulgaris, English “ mugwort”) is a species of perennial herbaceous plants of the genus Wormwood. The name "Chernobyl" comes from a blackish stem - a blade of grass (material from the free Internet encyclopedia "Wikipedia", website)

“The third angel sounded, and a great star fell from heaven, burning like a lamp, and fell on a third of the rivers and on the fountains of water. The name of this star is Wormwood, and a third of the waters became wormwood, and many of the people died from behold, because they became bitter ...

And I saw and heard one Angel flying in the middle of the sky and saying with a loud voice: “Woe, woe, woe to those who live on earth from the rest of the difficult voices of the three Angels who will trumpet!”

Apocalypse 8

Apocalypse Today. What does he look like?

Eyewitnesses of each era give the answer in different ways. The Holy Apostle John, who mystically predicted the events of the distant future, does not spare colors and amazes the reader with the scale of disasters:

“The fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star fall from heaven to earth, and the key was given to it from the treasury of the abyss. She opened the well of the abyss, and smoke came out of the well, like smoke from a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened by the smoke from the well. And the locusts came out of the smoke to the earth, and power was given to them, such as the scorpions of the earth have. And she was told not to harm the grass of the earth, and no greenery, and no tree, but only to one people who do not have the seal of God on their foreheads. And it was given to her not to kill them, but only to torment them for five months; and its torment is like the torment of a scorpion when it stings a man.”

Two thousand years later, an eyewitness to the man-made apocalypse, Yuri Tregub (shift supervisor of the 4th unit of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant), will describe what is happening in a language much more ordinary and much more terrible in this routine:

“April 25, 1986, I took over the shift. At first I was not ready for the tests ... only after two hours, when I got into the essence of the program. When accepting the shift, it was said that the security systems had been removed. Well, of course, I asked Kazachkov: “How did they get you out?” He says: "On the basis of the program, although I objected." With whom did he speak with Dyatlov (deputy chief engineer of the station), or what? It was not possible to convince him. Well, the program is the program, it was developed by the people responsible for the implementation, after all ... Only after I carefully read the program, only then did I have a lot of questions about it. And in order to talk with management, you need to deeply study the documentation, otherwise you can always be left in the cold. When I had all these questions, it was already 6 pm - and there was no one to contact. I did not like the program for its vagueness. It was evident that it was made up by an electrician - Metlenko or someone from Dontekhenergo ... Sasha Akimov (the head of the next shift) came at the beginning of the twelfth, at half past eleven he was already in place. I tell Akimov: “I have a lot of questions about this program. In particular, where to take the extra power, it should be written in the program.” When the turbine is cut off from the reactor, the excess thermal power must be put somewhere. We have a special system that, in addition to the turbine, provides steam intake ... And I already realized that this test will not take place on my shift. I had no moral right to interfere in this - after all, Akimov took over the shift. But I told him all my doubts. Lots of questions about the program. And he stayed to be present at the trials ... If only he knew how it would end ...

The running experiment begins. The turbine is disconnected from the steam and at this time they look at how long its run-out (mechanical rotation) will last. And then the command was given, Akimov gave it. We didn't know how the coastdown equipment worked, so in the first seconds I perceived… there was some kind of bad sound. I thought it was the sound of a braked turbine. I remember how I described it in the first days of the accident: as if the Volga at full speed began to slow down and skid. Such a sound: doo-doo-doo-doo ... Turning into a roar. The building vibrates. The control room (panel control unit) was trembling. Then a blow sounded. Kirshenbaum shouted: "Water hammer in the deaerators!" This blow was not very good. Compared to what happened next. Although a strong blow. The control room shook. I jumped back, and at that time a second blow followed. That was a very strong blow. The plaster crumbled, the whole building went down ... the light went out, then the emergency power was restored. I jumped back from where I was standing because I couldn't see anything there. I only saw that the main safety valves were open. The opening of one GPA is an emergency, and eight GPAs - it was already such ... something supernatural ...

Everyone was in shock. All stood with long faces. I was very scared. Complete shock. Such a blow is the most natural earthquake. True, I still thought that there might be something with the turbine. Akimov gives me the command to open the manual valves of the reactor cooling system. I shout to Gazin - he is the only one who is free, everyone on the watch is busy: "Let's run, we will help." We jumped out into the corridor, there is such an extension.

They ran up the stairs. There is some kind of blue fumes ... we simply did not pay attention to it, because we understood how serious everything was ... I returned and reported that the room was steamed up. Then… ah, that's what happened. As soon as I reported this, SIUB (senior unit control engineer) shouts that the fittings on the process capacitors have failed. Well, I-I'm free again. I should have gone to the turbine hall ... I open the door - there are fragments here, it seems that I will have to be a climber, large fragments are lying around, there is no roof ... The roof of the turbine hall has fallen - something must have fallen on it ... I see the sky and stars in these holes, I see that underfoot pieces of the roof and black bitumen, so ... dusty. I think - wow ... where does this blackness come from? Then I understood. It was graphite (the filling of a nuclear reactor. - Approx. Aut.). Later, at the third block, I was informed that a dosimetrist came and said that on the fourth block, 1000 microroentgens per second, and on the third - 250.

I meet Proskuryakov in the corridor. He says: "Do you remember the glow that was on the street?" - "I remember." “Why is nothing being done? Probably, the zone has melted ... "I say:" I think so too. If there is no water in the separator drum, then this is probably the “E” circuit heated up, and from it such an ominous light. I went up to Dyatlov and once again pointed out to him at this moment. He says, "Let's go." And we went down the corridor further. We went out into the street and went past the fourth block ... to determine. Underfoot - some kind of black soot, slippery. We passed near the blockage ... I pointed to this radiance ... showed under my feet. He said to Dyatlov: "This is Hiroshima." He was silent for a long time ... we moved on ... Then he said: “I never dreamed of such a thing even in a terrible dream.” He, apparently, was ... well, what can I say ... An accident of enormous proportions.

I am Alpha and Omega, Beginning and End

Apocalypse 1

The city of Chernobyl, which gave the name to the nuclear power plant, actually has practically nothing to do with it.

This town, known since 1127 as Strezhev, received its current name under the son of the Kyiv prince Rurik at the end of the 12th century. As a small county center, it remained until recently, passing from hand to hand. In the 19th century, a large Jewish community appeared in the town, and a couple of its representatives (Menahem and Mordechai of Chernobyl) were even canonized by the Jewish Church as saints. The last owners of the district - the Polish moneybags Khodkevich - were driven out by the Bolsheviks. It would have been so easy for a provincial town of Polissya to perish in historical obscurity, like thousands of its twins, if in 1969 the then authorities did not decide to build the largest nuclear power plant in Europe in its vicinity (at first, the state district power station appeared in the project). It received the name of Chernobyl, although it is located at a distance of 18 km from the "progenitor" city. The provincial log village was not suitable for the role of the capital of Ukrainian nuclear scientists, and on February 4, 1970, the builders solemnly drove the first peg into the foundation of the new city, named after the local full-flowing Pripyat River. It was to become a "showcase of socialism" and its most advanced industry.

For you say: “I am rich, I have grown rich, and I have need of nothing,” but you don’t know that you are unfortunate and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked.

Apocalypse 3

The city was built in a complex, according to a pre-approved master plan. Moscow architect Nikolai Ostozhenko developed the so-called "triangular building type" with houses of different heights. Neighborhoods, similar to their Togliatti and Volgodonsk twins, surrounded the administrative center with its district executive committee, the Palace of Culture, the Polesie hotel, a children's park and other objects, as they said then, "social and cultural life." In terms of their diversity and number per capita, Pripyat had no equal in the Soviet Union. In defiance of the cramped streets of old cities, the avenues of the newcomer turned out to be wide and spacious. The system of their location excluded the appearance of traffic jams, still unseen at that time. Residential houses formed cozy green courtyards where children frolicked and adults rested. All this made it possible to call Pripyat "the standard of Soviet urban planning", according to the title of the book by architect V. Dvorzhetsky, published in 1985.

The city was originally planned to accommodate 75-80 thousand people, so those 49 thousand that were actually registered at the time of the accident felt quite spacious. The station workers, of course, received separate apartments in the first place. Bachelor visitors relied on dormitories (there were as many as 18 in total), there were "hostels" and hotel-type houses for young married couples. There were almost no others in the city - the average age of Pripyat residents did not exceed 26 years. At their service, the builders handed over a large cinema, kindergartens, 2 stadiums, many gyms and swimming pools. By the May Day holidays of 1986, a "Ferris wheel" was supposed to be launched in the park. He was never destined to roll happy kids ...

In a word, Pripyat, according to the plan of its creators, was to become an exemplary city, where crime, greed, conflicts and other "vices characteristic of the decaying West" are completely absent. The apologists of a bright communist future did not take into account one thing - that along with new residents, old social problems will come to this oasis. And although former Pripyat residents usually characterize their former life as “happy and serene,” it was not much different from the widespread Soviet reality. It is not true that there was almost no crime in the city of nuclear scientists. The kids were really fearlessly let out on the street, and the doors of the apartments were often not locked, but theft of personal property was common. Bicycles and boats were especially popular with thieves. In V. Gubarev's play "Sarcophagus", a burglar named Cyclist robbed an apartment on the night of the accident and fled the scene of the crime in a two-wheeled vehicle. He was later covered by a radioactive cloud. “We doubt,” the locals grin, “while he was cleaning the apartment, his bicycle would have been stolen.” There were also murders in the city, mainly on domestic grounds, on the day of receiving a salary and its “washing”. The most high-profile crimes were the hanging of two young people on a horizontal bar in 1974 (the butcher of the Beryozka store was detained in this case) and the death of a young Komsomol girl in hostel No. 10 ten years later. She began to drive out the young guys who came to her and received a mortal blow to the head with a fist. The show trial was held at the Palace of Culture, where the killer received capital punishment. The old-timers also remember the armed robberies of the savings bank at the local Yanov railway station and the department store on Friendship of Peoples Street (1975). The youth also did not have a meek disposition: mass fights between local lads and visiting "Rex" happened all the time. This was the name of the builders, who, as a rule, came from Ukrainian villages who lived in hostels. The police did not remain in debt and since 1980 they have been intensively chasing companies of more than three people. Pripyat even had its own exhibitionist, who frightened the girls with his dubious "merits".

In the evenings, the audience walked along the local Broadway - Lenin Street, arranged gatherings in the Pripyat cafe and drank culturally on the river bank near the pier. The youth was torn to the legendary disco "Edison-2" by Alexander Demidov, held in the local recreation center "Energetik". Tickets were often not enough, and then the unfortunate palace was subjected to a real storm of excited dance lovers. This disco survived Pripyat for a whole five-year period, gathering in the new Slavutich.

Surprisingly for such a regime city, there were dissatisfied with the Soviet regime in it. In 1970 there was a certain riot, which remained without visible consequences. In 1985, a crowd of young people overturned several cars and seriously clashed with law enforcement, which was even reported by "enemy voices." Self-made printouts of dissidents circulated around the city, and the population listened with might and main to the Voice of America and the Air Force radio stations. The fact is all the more surprising when you consider that the largest radio tracking station Chernobyl-2, which will be discussed below, was located very close by. And yet, on the whole, local life was much calmer than in any other provincial town. The basis of the population were highly skilled workers and engineers, in whose interests there was a prestigious job at a nuclear power plant, where people with a tarnished reputation were not allowed.

In parallel with the construction of city blocks, the construction of four blocks of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant was carried out. The site for it was chosen for a long time, since 1966, considering also alternative options in the Zhytomyr, Vinnitsa and Kyiv regions. The floodplain of the Pripyat River near the village of Kopachi was recognized as the most suitable due to the low fertility of the expropriated lands, the presence of a railway, river communication and unlimited water resources. In 1970, the builders of Yuzhatomenergostroy began to dig a foundation pit for the first power unit. It was commissioned on December 14, 1977, the second one a year later. The construction, as usual, faced a shortage of materials and equipment, which was the reason for the appeal of the first secretary of the Communist Party of Ukraine V. Shcherbytsky to Kosygin. In 1982, a fairly large accident occurred at the station - a rupture of one of the fuel elements (fuel rod), which caused the first power unit to stand idle for a long time. The scandal was hushed up at the cost of removing the chief engineer Akinfeev from his post, but all plans were fulfilled, and following the results of the five-year plan, the Chernobyl nuclear power plant was presented for awarding the Order of Lenin. The first call went unanswered...

The launches of the 3rd and 4th power units are dated 1981 and 1983. The station was expanding, the project already included the launches of the 5th and 6th units, which meant constant well-paid work for thousands of new citizens. A large area has already been cleared for future residential microdistricts in Pripyat.

Antenna ZGRLS "Chernobyl-2"

Few people then knew that quite close, literally a few kilometers away, there lives another city, the super-secret Chernobyl-2, which serves the over-the-horizon radar tracking station (ZGRLS). It is located in the forest northwest of the real Chernobyl, 9 km from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, and is not marked on any map. However, its giant steel radar, called the "Arc" by the military, has a height of almost 140 m and is perfectly visible from everywhere in the district. About a thousand people served such a colossus, and an urban-type settlement was built especially for them with a single street named after Kurchatov. Naturally, it was fenced along the perimeter with a “thorn”, and warning signs were installed another 5 km before the restricted area. Sometimes they didn’t help either - the most mushroom places are located here, and KGB officers had to run through the forests for mushroom pickers, taking crops and screwing license plates from cars. Of course, such secrecy gave rise to a lot of rumors and rumors. The most popular one said that psychotronic weapons were being tested here in order to turn hostile Europeans into friendly zombies with the help of radio waves at X-hour. This version was seriously discussed even in the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine in 1993.

In fact, the only purpose of the ZGRLS was to track NATO ballistic missile launches, the direction of capture was the countries of Northern Europe and the USA. Similar stations were built in Nikolaev and Komsomolsk-on-Amur. The Duga itself, unique in its size and complexity, was assembled in 1976 and tested in 1979. In the Chernihiv region, there is a powerful source of short waves that passed through the entire territory of the United States, were reflected and caught by the Chernobyl radar. The data was received by the most powerful computers at that time and processed. The complex also included the TsKS - the center of space communications. For its service, a whole complex with residential and technical premises was erected. After the Chernobyl accident, it was used to shelter soldiers who worked as liquidators.

Tracking station, Chernobyl-2

The proximity of Chernobyl-2 to the nuclear power plant is not accidental - the object devoured a colossal amount of electricity. Despite all its uniqueness, the radar had a lot of shortcomings. It was useless for detecting pinpoint missile launches and could only "catch" the massive attacks characteristic of a nuclear war. In addition, its powerful emitters jammed the communications of aircraft and ships of European countries, which caused violent protests. The operating frequencies had to be changed, and the equipment had to be finalized. New commissioning was planned for 1986 ...

Was there any predestination for the events that crossed out the smooth course of peaceful pre-accident life? It is known that the inhabitants of nearby villages said: "There is a time when it will be green, but not fun." Eyewitnesses claim that some old women prophesied: “There will be everything, but there will be no one. And on the site of the city, feather grass will grow. You can condescendingly treat these "grandmother's tales", but there is a description of the dream of the master of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant Alexander Krasin. In 1984, he dreamed of an explosion at the 4th unit, he dreamed in all the details that took place two years later. He warned all his relatives about a future accident, but he did not dare to go to the authorities with this idea. The most famous such case of "prophetic dream" occurred a hundred years ago, when a reporter for the Boston Globe newspaper, Ed Sampson, dreamed of a terrible explosion on a distant native island. He wrote down his dream on paper, and by mistake the message was printed in all the newspapers. The reporter was fired for lying, and only a week later, battered ships brought news of the catastrophic eruption of the Krakatoa volcano, several thousand kilometers from Boston. Even the name of the island coincided ...

Be that as it may, the countdown was started, and "green, but gloomy times" were not long in coming.

Judgment Day

What preceded the blow that Yuri Tregub witnessed? And could it have been avoided? Who is guilty? - these issues were actively discussed both immediately after the accident and two decades later. There are two camps of irreconcilable opponents. The former argue that the main cause of the disaster was the design flaws of the reactor itself and an imperfect protection system. The latter blame the operators for everything and point to unprofessionalism and a low culture of radiation safety. Both those and others have strong arguments in the form of expert opinions, conclusions of various examinations and commissions. As a rule, the version of the "human factor" is put forward by designers who defend the honor of the uniform. They are opposed by exploiters who are no less interested in saving face. Let's try to break up a third, independent camp between them, to assess the causes and consequences from the outside.

The reactor installed at the 4th block of the Chernobyl NPP was developed in the 60s by the Research Institute of Power Engineering of the USSR Minsredmash, and the scientific management was carried out by the Institute of Atomic Energy. Kurchatov. It was named RBMK-1000 (high power channel reactor for 1000 electric megawatts). It uses graphite as a moderator, and water as a coolant. The fuel is uranium, compressed into pellets and placed in fuel rods made of uranium dioxide and zirconium cladding. The energy of the nuclear reaction heats the water flowing through the pipelines, the water boils, the steam is separated and fed to the turbine. It rotates and generates much-needed electricity for the country. The Chernobyl nuclear power plant became the third station where this type of reactor was installed, before that they were "made happy" with the Kursk and Leningrad nuclear power plants. It was a time of economy - earlier in the USSR, and throughout the world, they used reactors enclosed in cases made of superalloys. RBMK did not have such protection, which made it possible to significantly save on construction - alas, at the expense of safety. In addition, the fuel on it could be reloaded without stopping, which also promised considerable benefits. The reactor was created on the basis of the military, which produced weapons-grade plutonium for defense needs. He had a congenital defect in the form of those same rods that regulate the chain reaction - they are introduced too slowly into the active zone (in 18 seconds instead of 3 required). As a result, the reactor gets too much time for self-acceleration on prompt neutrons, which the rods are designed to absorb. In addition, during the construction of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, in order to save concrete, the height of the under-reactor room was reduced by 2 meters, as a result of which the length of the rods also decreased - from 7 to 4 meters. But the most important imperfection of the protection turned out to be the complete ignorance by the designers of the effect of steam on the power of the reactor. In its transitional modes, the working channels were filled with steam instead of "dense" water. Then it was believed that in this case the power should fall, and there were no reliable calculation programs and opportunities for laboratory experiments. Only much later, practice showed that steam gives such a jump in reactivity, and in a matter of seconds, that the power increases a hundredfold, and the slow control rods remain halfway at the moment when the atomic genie is already breaking out of the bottle.

Simultaneously with the construction of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, the city department of the KGB was deployed in Pripyat. The 3rd Division of the 2nd Directorate of Counterintelligence was engaged in affairs at the facility itself. His competence included collecting data on the construction of the station, its work, employees and the possibilities of sabotage and other activities of enemy intelligence. The first document of the Department, which had great analysts, was a certificate dated September 19, 1971, which assessed the technical characteristics of the future Chernobyl nuclear power plant. It noted that the Ministry of Energy of Ukraine had no experience in operating such facilities, a low level of personnel selection, and shortcomings in construction. Then no one began to listen to the Chekists. In 1976, the Kiev KGB sent a special message to the leadership of the department about "systematic violations of the technology of construction and installation work at certain construction sites." It contains deadly data: technical documentation from designers is not delivered on time, welded pipes of the Kurakhovsky KMZ are completely unsuitable, but accepted by the station management, Buchan brick for building premises has a strength 2 times lower than the standard, etc. The concrete for the liquid radioactive waste tank (!) was laid with violations that threatened to leak, and its lining turned out to be deformed. The message ended, as usual, with the imperfection of protection from possible saboteurs, which was entrusted entirely to pensioners - Vokhrovites. But the "voice of the crying security officer" drowned in the desert of inaction. The first secretary of the Communist Party of Ukraine and in fact the owner of the republic, Vladimir Shcherbitsky, reacted very sluggishly to the warnings of the chairman of the KGB of the Ukrainian SSR Vitaliy Fedorchuk, sending another "duty" commission to the station. Well, by God, don't stop construction because the welded equipment of our Yugoslav friends from Energoinvest and Djura Dzhurovich turned out to be defective! And the fact that at high temperatures a threat of an accident is created - this still needs to be proven ...

Meanwhile, in 1983-1985, there were 5 accidents and 63 failures of the main equipment at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. And a whole group of KGB workers who warned of the possible consequences received penalties for "alarming and disinformation." The last report was dated February 26, 1986, exactly 2 months before the accident, about the unacceptably low quality of the floors of the 5th power unit.

There were also warnings from scientists. Professor Dubovsky, one of the best experts in the USSR on nuclear safety, warned back in the 70s about the danger of operating a reactor of this type, which was confirmed during the accident at the Leningrad Nuclear Power Plant in 1975. At that time, only an accident saved the city from disaster. Employee of the Institute of Atomic Energy V.P. Volkov bombarded the leadership with reports on the unreliability of the protection of the RBMK reactor and proposed measures to improve it. Management was inactive. Then the stubborn scientist reached the director of the Institute, Academician Aleksandrov. He appointed an emergency meeting on this issue, which for some reason did not take place. Volkov had nowhere else to turn, since his all-powerful boss then headed the Academy of Sciences at the same time, that is, he was the highest scientific authority. Another great opportunity to overhaul security has been missed. Later, after the accident, Volkov with his report will make his way to Gorbachev himself and become an outcast in his Institute ...

On March 27, 1986, the Literaturna Ukraina newspaper published an article by Lyubov Kovalevskaya “Not a Private Matter”, which was hardly noticed by anyone. It is then that she will make a splash in the West and serve as proof of the non-randomness of the events that have taken place, but for now the young journalist, with the ardor characteristic of those perestroika years, scourged negligent suppliers: “326 tons of slotted coating for the storage of spent nuclear fuel arrived defective from the Volzhsky metalwork plant. About 220 tons of defective columns were sent to the installation of the storage by the Kashinsky ZMK. But it’s unacceptable to work like that!” Kovalevskaya saw the main cause of the accident in the nepotism and mutual responsibility that flourished at the station, in which mistakes and negligence got away with the authorities. She, as usual, was accused of incompetence and the desire to make a name for herself. There were only a few weeks left before the adventurous experiment at Unit 4…

And Az saw that the Lamb had opened the first of the seven seals, and Az heard one of the four animals saying, as it were with a voice of thunder: "Come and see."

Apocalypse 6

His program, scheduled for April 25, was also designed to save money - it was about using the energy of the turbine's rotation at the moment the reactor was shut down. The conditions for the conduction provided for the shutdown of the emergency reactor cooling system (ECCS) and power reduction. The creators did not work out the issues of the reactor behavior and its protection in such modes to the end, leaving the prerogative of decision-making to the station personnel. The personnel acted as best they could, obeying the test conditions approved at the top, and making fatal mistakes. But can a simple engineer be blamed for consequences that are not foreseen by physicists and design academics? Be that as it may, the countdown had already begun, and the chronicle of the experiment turned into a chronicle of an undeclared tragedy:

01 h 06 min. The beginning of the reduction of power unit.

03 h 47 min. The thermal power of the reactor was reduced and stabilized at the level of 50% (1600 MW).

14h00. ECCS (Reactor Emergency Cooling System) is disconnected from the circulation circuit. Postponement of the test program at the request of the Kievenergo dispatcher (the ECCS was not put into operation, the reactor continued to operate at a thermal power of 1600 MW).

15 h 20 min. - 23 h 10 min. The preparation of the power unit for testing has begun. They are led by Deputy Chief Engineer Anatoly Dyatlov, a tough, strong-willed boss and one of the country's leading nuclear specialists. He is aiming for the chair of his boss Nikolai Fomin - a party nominee who is going to be promoted, and a successful experiment can bring him closer to the goal.

Curriculum vitae

Dyatlov, Anatoly Stepanovich(03/03/1931 - 12/13/1995). A native of the village of Atamanovo, Krasnoyarsk Territory. In 1959 he graduated from MEPhI with honors. He worked in Siberia at the installation of nuclear submarine reactors, where a major accident occurred. He received a radiation dose of 200 rems, and his son died of leukemia. At the Chernobyl nuclear power plant - since 1973. He reached the rank of deputy chief engineer and was considered one of the strongest specialists of the station. Convicted in 1986 under article 220 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR for a period of 10 years as one of the perpetrators of the accident at the fourth unit. He received a radiation dose of 550 rem, but survived. Released after 4 years for health reasons. He died of heart failure caused by radiation sickness. Author of the book "Chernobyl. How it was”, where he blamed the reactor designers for the accident. He was awarded the Orders of the Red Banner of Labor and the Badge of Honor.

00 h 28 min. With a thermal power of the reactor of about 500 MW, in the process of switching to an automatic power regulator, a decrease in thermal power, not provided for by the program, was allowed to approximately 30 MW. There was a conflict between Dyatlov and cameraman Leonid Toptunov, who believed that it was impossible to continue the experiment at such a low power. The opinion of the boss, who decided to go all the way, won. Started power up. The dispute in the control room does not stop. Akimov is trying to persuade Dyatlov to raise the power to 700 safe megawatts. So it is fixed in the program signed by the chief engineer.

00 h 39 min. - 00 h 43 min. The personnel, in accordance with the test regulations, blocked the emergency protection signal to stop two heat generators.

01 h 03 min. The thermal power of the reactor was raised to 200 MW and stabilized. Dyatlov still decides to test at low values. The boiling in the boilers weakened and xenon poisoning of the core began. The personnel hurriedly removed the automatic control rods from it.

01 h 03 min. - 01 h 07 min. In addition to the six operating hydraulic pumps, two standby MCPs have been put into operation. The water flow increased sharply, steam formation weakened, the water level in the separator drums dropped to an emergency level.

01 h 19 min. The personnel blocked the emergency shutdown signal of the reactor due to insufficient water level, violating the technical regulations for operation. Their actions had their own logic: this happened quite often, and never led to negative consequences. Operator Stolyarchuk simply did not pay any attention to the signals. The experiment had to go on. Due to the large influx of water into the core, steam generation almost stopped. The power dropped sharply, and the operator, in addition to the automatic control rods, removed the manual control rods from the core, preventing the decrease in reactivity. The height of the RBMK is 7 meters, and the speed of the removal of the rods is 40 cm / sec. The active zone was left without protection - in fact, left to itself.

01 h 22 min. The Skala system issued a record of the parameters, according to which it was necessary to immediately shut down the reactor - the reactivity increased, and the rods simply did not have time to return to the core to adjust it. Passions flared up again on the control room control panel. Head Akimov did not turn off the reactor, but decided to start testing. The operators obeyed - no one wanted to argue with the authorities and lose a prestigious job.

01 h 23 min. Start of testing. The steam supply to turbine No. 8 was shut off and its run-out started. Contrary to the regulations, the personnel blocked the emergency shutdown signal of the reactor when both turbines were turned off. Four hydraulic pumps have started running. They began to slow down, the flow of cooling water decreased sharply, and the temperature at the entrance to the reactor increased. The rods no longer had time to overcome the fatal 7 meters and return to the active zone. Then the count went on for seconds.

01 h 23 min. 40 sec. The shift supervisor presses the AZ-5 (reactor emergency protection) button to speed up the introduction of the rods. A sharp increase in the volume of steam and a jump in power are recorded. The rods passed 2-3 meters and stopped. The reactor began to self-accelerate, its power exceeded 500 megawatts and continued to grow sharply. Two protection systems worked, but they did not change anything.

01 h 23 min. 44 sec. The chain reaction has become uncontrollable. The power of the reactor exceeded the nominal by 100 times, the pressure in it increased many times and displaced the water. The fuel rods became red-hot and shattered, filling the graphite filler with uranium. The pipelines collapsed, and water gushed onto the graphite. Chemical interaction reactions formed "explosive" gases, and the first explosion was heard. The thousand-ton metal cover of the Elena reactor jumped up like on a boiling kettle and turned around its axis, cutting off pipelines and supply channels. Air rushed into the active zone.

01 h 23 min. 46 sec. The resulting "explosive" mixture of oxygen, carbon monoxide and hydrogen detonated and destroyed the reactor with a repeated explosion, throwing out fragments of graphite, destroyed fuel rods, particles of nuclear fuel and equipment fragments. Hot gases rose to a height of several kilometers in the form of a cloud, revealing to the world a new post-nuclear era. For Pripyat, Chernobyl and hundreds of villages around, a new, post-accident countdown began.

The accident took its victims in the first seconds. Operator Valery Khodemchuk was cut off from the exit and remained forever buried in the fourth block. His colleague Vladimir Shashenok was crushed by fallen structures. He managed to send a signal to the computer center, but he could no longer answer: his spine was crushed, his ribs were broken. The operators carried Vladimir out of the rubble, and a few hours later he died in the hospital.

Fires broke out on the roofs of the third unit and the turbine hall. The hall of the fourth block was blazing with might and main. To the credit of the people who worked on that fateful night, they did not leave the situation to chance and immediately began to fight for the survivability of the station. Computing center engineers saved the Skala system from floods pouring from the ninth floor. The shift operators restored the operation of the feed pumps of the third unit. The workers of the nitrogen-oxygen station did not leave their place and supplied liquid nitrogen all night to cool the reactors. Stunned by the explosion, Vladimir Palagel, junior inspector of the preventive monitoring service, transmitted an alarm signal to the nuclear power plant fire station.

Ordinary heroism

Firefighters must show courage, courage, resourcefulness, perseverance and, despite any difficulties and even the threat to life itself, strive to complete the combat mission at all costs.

From the combat charter of the fire service

... That week was not warm in April. The trees were already painted green, the ground had long dried up and covered with grass. The traditional May holidays were already on the nose, and the inhabitants of Pripyat filled their refrigerators with food to capacity.

Curriculum vitae

Pravik, Vladimir Pavlovich(06/13/1962 - 05/11/1986) - head of the guard of the 2nd paramilitary fire department for the protection of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.

Born on June 13, 1962 in the city of Chernobyl, Kyiv region, Ukrainian SSR, in the family of an employee. Secondary education.

In the internal affairs bodies of the USSR since 1979. In 1982 he graduated from the Cherkasy fire-technical school of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR. He loved radio work, photography. He was an active worker, chief of staff of the Komsomol Searchlight. My wife graduated from a music school and taught music in a kindergarten. A month before the accident, a daughter was born in the family.

While extinguishing a fire at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, Pravik received a high dose of radiation. With poor health, he was sent to Moscow for treatment. He died in the 6th clinical hospital on May 11, 1986. He was buried in Moscow at the Mitinsky cemetery.

By decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of September 25, 1986, for courage, heroism and selfless actions shown during the liquidation of the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, he was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. Awarded the Order of Lenin. Enlisted forever in the lists of personnel of the paramilitary fire brigade of the Internal Affairs Directorate of the Kyiv Regional Executive Committee. The monument to the Hero was erected in the city of Irpin, Kyiv region. The name of the Hero is immortalized on the marble slab of the memorial "Chernobyl Heroes", erected in the park on the boulevard of the Verkhovna Rada in Kyiv.

The city was sleeping and seeing its last peaceful dreams, when a bell rang on the control panel of the HPV-2 duty officer in charge of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Lieutenant Vladimir Pravik, who was in charge of the guard, immediately understood the seriousness of the situation and gave a regional fire danger signal (No. 3) on the radio.

The fact is that it was the second part that was directly responsible for the station, and the sixth served the city. At numerous exercises, the fighters tested the extinguishing technology at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant to automaticity, but this level of complexity was considered only theoretically. The outfit of the sixth unit, led by Lieutenant Viktor Kibenok, arrived almost simultaneously with their colleagues, since the distance from Pripyat to the station is much shorter than from Chernobyl.

These two young guys once studied together at the same school, and now they were alone in front of the fire-breathing mouth of the underworld and were not afraid of him. They led their comrades behind them - 27 people in all - and not one flinched, did not hint at mortal danger. Pravik took command as the first officer to arrive at the fire site. At that time, the turbine hall was already burning with might and main, the roof was on fire, and the pieces of graphite thrown out of the active zone “shone” with death itself. According to the Combat Manual, the commander must conduct reconnaissance, identify the source of the fire and the method of suppressing it. The young lieutenant quickly climbed to the roof and stopped, dumbfounded by an unprecedented sight. Before him, the first man in history, a radioactive volcano opened its torn inside, spewing the otherworldly light of its red-hot depths. It so happened that the first man was not afraid of almost inevitable death, did not step back, but stood with his comrades as a wall in the path of fire. The roof of the turbine hall of the third unit was flooded with combustible bitumen - it was handed over in a hurry for the next congress, the refractory coating was not delivered, and the builders used the one that was at hand, despite all the protests of the firefighters. Now it's time to take the rap for all the sins of that system, for the victorious reports of early surrenders, for the grossest violations of technology and a disregard for safety.

Curriculum vitae

Kibenok, Viktor Nikolaevich- head of the guard of the 6th paramilitary fire brigade for the protection of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, lieutenant of the internal service.

Born on February 17, 1963 in the village of Ivanovka, Nizhneserogozsky district, Kherson region, Ukrainian SSR, in the family of an employee. Ukrainian. Secondary education.

In the internal affairs bodies of the USSR since 1980. In 1984 he graduated from the Cherkasy fire-technical school of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR.

While extinguishing a fire at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, he received a high dose of radiation. With poor health, he was sent to Moscow for treatment. He died in the 6th clinical hospital on May 11, 1986. He was buried in Moscow at the Mitinsky cemetery.

By decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of September 25, 1986, for courage, heroism and selfless actions shown during the liquidation of the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, he was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

Awarded the Order of Lenin, medals.

Forever enlisted in the lists of personnel of the paramilitary fire brigade of the Internal Affairs Directorate of the Kyiv Regional Executive Committee. The name is immortalized on the marble slab of the memorial "Chernobyl Heroes", erected in the park on the boulevard of the Verkhovna Rada in Kyiv.

Pravik took Tishchura and Titenok, fighters from the sixth part, with him to the roof. The roof burned in many places, boots got stuck in hot bitumen. The lieutenant took over the extinguishing from the fire barrel, and the soldiers began to throw down burning graphite.

Who knows whether they imagined the level of radiation emanating from these pieces or not.

Meanwhile, Kibenok went straight to the fourth reactor, where the fire danger was lower, but the radiation went off scale for hundreds of roentgens per hour - the level of imminent death. The fire threatened to spread to the third operating reactor, and then the consequences would become unpredictable. Subordinates took turns standing at the fire carriage, and only the commander did not leave his post for a minute.

• 26. 04. 2016

Nina Nazarova collected excerpts from books about the accident, its consequences, dead relatives, panic in Kyiv and the court

Accident

The book of two special correspondents of Izvestia, written in hot pursuit, went to press less than a year after the disaster. Reports from Kyiv and the affected area, educational program about the effects of radiation, cautious comments by doctors and the indispensable conclusion for the Soviet press "lessons of Chernobyl".

The NPP fire protection duty was carried by the third guard. The whole day the guard spent time in accordance with the usual schedule: theoretical classes in the classroom, practical classes under the guidance of Lieutenant Vladimir Pravik at the fifth power unit under construction. Then they played volleyball and watched TV.

Vladimir Prishchepa was on duty in the third guard: “I went to bed at 11 pm, because later it was necessary to step in as orderlies. At night I heard an explosion, but did not attach any importance to it. After one or two minutes, a combat alarm sounded ... "

Helicopters are decontaminating the buildings of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant after the accident

Ivan Shavrey, who at that moment was on duty near the control room, did not pay much attention to the rapidly developing events in the first seconds:

“The three of us were standing, talking, when suddenly - it seemed to me so - a strong burst of steam was heard. We did not take it seriously: similar sounds were heard more than once until that day. I was about to leave to rest, when suddenly the alarm went off. They rushed to the shield, and Legun tried to get in touch, but there was no connection ... And then there was an explosion. I rushed to the window. The explosion was followed immediately by another explosion. I saw a fireball that soared over the roof of the fourth block ... "

(Andrey Illesh, Andrey Pralnikov. Report from Chernobyl. M., 1987.)

Relatives

The novel by Svetlana Aleksievich, the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2015, is built in the genre of the history of emotions on the oral testimonies of ordinary people. All of them, regardless of occupation and degree of involvement in the disaster, comprehended and experienced the tragedy.

“… We recently got married. They also walked down the street and held hands, even if they were going to the store. Always together. I told him: "I love you." But I still didn’t know how much I loved him ... I couldn’t imagine ... We lived in the hostel of the fire department, where he served. On the second floor. And there are three more young families, they all share the same kitchen. And below, on the first floor, there were cars. Red fire trucks. This was his service. I always know: where is he, what's wrong with him? In the middle of the night I hear some noise. Screams. She looked out the window. He saw me: “Close the windows and go to bed. The station is on fire. I will be right back".

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I didn't see the explosion itself. Only flame. Everything seemed to glow... The whole sky... A high flame. Soot. The heat is terrible. And he is not and is not. Soot from bitumen burning, the roof of the station was covered with bitumen. We walked, then I remembered, as if in tar. They shot down the fire, and he crawled. Got up. They kicked off burning graphite with their feet ... They left without canvas suits, as they were in the same shirts, and left. They were not warned, they were called to an ordinary fire ...

Four o'clock... Five o'clock... Six... At six we were going to go to his parents. Plant potatoes. From the city of Pripyat to the village of Sperizhye, where his parents lived, forty kilometers. Sow, plow... His favorite work... Mother often recalled how she and her father did not want to let him go to the city, they even built a new house. They took him to the army. He served in Moscow in the fire brigades and when he returned: only in firefighters! He didn't acknowledge anything else. ( Silent.)

A victim of the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant is being treated at the sixth clinical hospital of the USSR Ministry of HealthPhoto: Vladimir Vyatkin / RIA Novosti

Seven o'clock... At seven o'clock they told me that he was in the hospital. I ran, but the police were already standing in a ring around the hospital, they didn’t let anyone in. Some ambulances drove by. The policemen were shouting: the cars are over the top, don't get close. I am not alone, all the wives came running, all those who had husbands that night ended up at the station. I rushed to look for my friend, she worked as a doctor in this hospital. Grabbed her by the bathrobe as she got out of the car:

Let me pass!

I can not! It's bad with him. All of them are bad.

I keep it:

Just look.

Okay, - he says, - then we run. For fifteen or twenty minutes.

I saw him… He was swollen all over, swollen… There were almost no eyes…

- I need some milk. A lot of milk! a friend told me. - So that they drink at least three liters.

But he doesn't drink milk.

Now he will drink.

Many doctors, nurses, especially nurses of this hospital will fall ill after some time. Will die. But no one knew that then...

At ten in the morning, the operator Shishenok died… He was the first to die… On the first day… We learned that the second one, Valera Khodemchuk, remained under the ruins. So they didn't get him. Concreted. But we did not yet know that they were all the first.

I ask:

Vasenka, what to do?

Get out of here! Leave! You will have a child.

I am pregnant. But how can I leave it? Requests:

Leave! Save the child! -

First I must bring you milk, and then we will decide.”

(Svetlana Aleksievich. Chernobyl prayer. M., 2013)

Cleanup

Memoirs of a reserve officer called to eliminate the accident and who worked for 42 days at the epicenter of the explosion - at the third and fourth reactors. The process of eliminating the consequences is meticulously described - what, how, in what sequence and under what conditions people did, as well as, in the same restrained tone, all the petty meanness of the leadership: how they saved on protective equipment and their quality, did not want to pay bonuses to the liquidators and cynically bypassed with awards.

“We were called to be sent to military camps for a period of one hundred and eighty days, sending today at twelve o'clock. To my question, was it possible to warn at least a day in advance, because it’s not military time (I had to send my wife with a six-month-old child to her parents in the city of Ulyanovsk, Kirovograd region. Even for bread to the store, go one and a half kilometers across rough terrain - the road is unpaved , ascents, descents, and even a woman in a foreign village cannot cope with a small child), I was given the answer: “Consider that this is wartime - they take you to the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant.”<…>

The Chernobyl accident. Travel and passage prohibitedPhoto: Igor Kostin / RIA Novosti

We had to work in the premises of the fourth reactor. The task was set - to build two walls from bags of cement mortar.<…>We began to measure the level of radiation. The dosimeter needle deviated to the right and went off scale. The dosimetrist switched the device to the next graduation of the scale, at which higher levels of radiation are taken. The arrow still deviated to the right. Finally she stopped. We took measurements in several places. At the end, they approached the opposite wall and set up a tripod to measure to the opening. The arrow went off scale. We left the room. The average level of radiation was calculated below. It was forty roentgens per hour. We calculated the time of work - it was three minutes.

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This is the time spent in the working room. It takes about twenty seconds to run in with a bag of cement, lay it down and run out of the room. Consequently, each of us had to appear in the working room ten times - to bring ten bags. In total, for eighty people - eight hundred bags.<…>With shovels they quickly put the solution into bags, tied it up, helped to lift it on the shoulders and ran upstairs. Supporting the bag on their shoulders with their right hand, they clung to the railing with their left and ran up the stairs to overcome the height of about eight or nine-story buildings. The flight stairs here were very long. When I ran upstairs, my heart just jumped out of my chest. The solution seeped through the bag and dripped all over the body. Having run into the working room, the bags were stacked so that they overlapped each other. This is how bricks are laid when building a house. Having laid the bag, we run down one after another. Oncoming people run up, straining with all their might, clinging to the railing. And again everything repeated.<…>

The respirators were like dirty wet rags, but we didn't have them to replace. We asked for these for work. Almost everyone took off their respirators because it was impossible to breathe.<…>For the first time in my life I had to learn what a headache is. He asked how others were feeling. Those who have been there for two, three weeks or more said that by the end of the first week upon arrival at the station, everyone has constant headaches, weakness, and a sore throat. I noticed that when we were driving to the station, and it was already visible, there was always a lack of lubrication in the eyes of everyone. We squinted, our eyes seemed to dry up.

(Vladimir Gudov. 731 special battalion. M., 2009.)

Volunteers

There are a lot of online samizdat with memories of the liquidators and eyewitnesses of the nuclear reactor accident - such stories are collected, for example, on the site people-of-chernobil.ru. The author of the memoirs "Liquidator" Sergey Belyakov, a chemist by training, went to Chernobyl as a volunteer, spent 23 days there, and later received American citizenship and found work in Singapore.

“In early June, I voluntarily came to the draft board. As a "secret carrier with a degree," I had a reservation from the Chernobyl training camp. Later, when in 87-88 there was a problem with the cadres of reserve officers, they seized everyone indiscriminately, but the 86th was on, the country was still merciful to its aged sons ... The young captain on duty at the district military registration and enlistment office, not understanding at first, said, they say , I have nothing to worry about - I am not called and will not be called. But when I repeated that I wanted to go of my own free will, he looked at me as if I were crazy and pointed to the office door, where the tired major, pulling out my registration card, said without expression:

Why the hell are you going there, why can't you sit at home?
There was nothing to cover.

A group of specialists is sent to the zone of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant to eliminate the consequences of the accidentPhoto: Boris Prikhodko/RIA Novosti

Just as inexpressively, he said that the summons would come by mail, you would have to come here again with it, get an order, travel documents, and go ahead.
My card has been moved to a brand new drawstring folder. The deed was done.
The days of waiting that followed were filled with a painful search for at least some news about a specific gathering place, about what the “partisans” were doing at the station, about their way of life ... Mother was mainly interested in the latter. However, having once taken a sip from the military "collection" bowler hat, I did not have rainbow illusions on this score.
But nothing new was reported about the participants of the special camps either in the press or on TV.”

(Sergey Belyakov. Liquidator. Lib.ru)

Life

"Chernobyl. We are alive as long as we are remembered” - on the one hand, a collection of later memoirs of the liquidators and scientists who worked in Chernobyl, notable for everyday details (scientist Irina Simanovskaya, for example, recalls that right up to 2005 she passed with an umbrella found in a pile of garbage in Pripyat) , and on the other - a photo report: what the zone looked like in the early 2010s.

After a short pause, the announcer continued: “But you can’t drink alcohol and wine,” again a short pause: “Because they cause intoxication.” The whole dining room was drowned in laughter.

« We arrived in Kyiv, celebrated business trips and went on a passenger boat to Chernobyl. Right there they changed into white overalls, which they took with them from the Kurchatov Institute. Comrades met us at the pier and took us to the local hospital, to the gynecology department, where the “Kurchatovites” and colleagues from the Kyiv Institute of Nuclear Research lived. Therefore, we were jokingly called gynecologists. It may be funny, but I settled in the antenatal ward number six.

Ukrainian SSR. Accident liquidatorsPhoto: Valery Zufarov/TASS

By the way, there was a funny incident in the dining room. There were always a lot of people there, the radio always worked. And now the announcer is giving a lecture on products that contribute to the removal of radionucleotides from the human body, including, the announcer says: “alcohol-containing products, wine help to remove radionucleotides.” There was an instant silence in the dining room. Are waiting. What will he say next? After a short pause, the announcer continued: “But you can’t drink alcohol and wine,” again a short pause: “Because they cause intoxication.” The whole dining room was drowned in laughter. The cackle was incredible.”

(Alexander Kupny. Chernobyl. Alive as long as we are remembered. Kharkov, 2011)

Radiation reconnaissance

Memoirs of the radiation intelligence officer Sergei Mirny is a book in the rare genre of funny and cynical tales about Chernobyl. In particular, the memoirs begin with a five-page story about how radiation affects the intestines (hint: as a laxative), and what range of emotional experiences the author experienced at the same time.

« First of all, in Chernobyl, they “radiated reconnaissance” of the territory of the nuclear power plant, settlements, roads. Then, according to these data, settlements with high levels were evacuated, important roads were washed to a tolerable level, signs “High radiation!” where they should have been placed (they looked very ridiculous, these signs, inside the zone itself; they would already write “Especially high radiation!”, Or something), at the nuclear power plant, those places where people accumulate and move, outlined and washed ... And they took up other areas , for the work that became urgent at this stage.<…>

... The fence can be stretched this way, but it can be that way. “So” it will be shorter, but what are the levels? If high, then maybe stretch it differently - at low levels? We will spend more poles and barbed wire (to hell with it, with wood and iron!), but at the same time people will receive smaller doses? Or to hell with them, with people, they will send new ones, but there are not enough wood materials and thorns now? This is how all issues are resolved - should at least be resolved - in the zone of radioactive contamination.<…>

A car leaving the Chernobyl disaster zone is being decontaminated at a specially created pointPhoto: Vitaly Ankov / RIA Novosti

I'm not talking about the villages - for them the level of gamma radiation was then a matter of life and death - in the most direct sense: more than 0.7 milliroentgen per hour - death: the village is being evicted; less than 0.7 - well, live for now ...<…>

And how is it made, this card? And what does it look like?

Ordinary enough.

A point is plotted on an ordinary topographic map - the place of measurement on the ground. And it is inscribed what level of radiation at this point ...<…>Then points with the same radiation levels are connected and get “lines of the same radiation level”, similar to the usual horizontal lines on ordinary maps.

(Sergey Mirny. Living force. Diary of a liquidator. M., 2010)

Panic in Kyiv

« The thirst for information that was felt here, in Kyiv, and, probably, everywhere - the Chernobyl echo shook the country without exaggeration - was simply physical.<…>

Uncertainty of the situation... Anxiety - imaginary and real... Nervousness... Well, tell me, how could the same refugees from Kiev be blamed for creating panic, when, by and large, the tension in the situation was born not least of all by ourselves, journalists. To be more precise, those who did not give us real information, who, strictly pointing with their fingers, said: “There is absolutely no need for newspapermen to know, say, in detail about the radiation background.”<…>

I especially remember an old woman sitting on a bench under the trees in the courtyard of a five-story building. Her chin was bright yellow - her grandmother drank iodine.

“What are you doing, mother?” - I rushed to her.

Evacuation of the population from the 30-kilometer zone of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Residents of the Kyiv region say goodbye to each other and to their homes, 1986Photo: Marushchenko/RIA Novosti

And she explained to me that she was being treated, that iodine was very useful and completely safe, because she washed it down with ... kefir. Granny handed me a half-empty bottle of kefir for persuasiveness. I couldn't explain anything to her.

On the same day, it turned out that there were more non-radiation patients in Kyiv clinics, there are many people who suffered from self-medication, including those with a burnt esophagus. How much effort it took later both newspapers and local television in order to dispel at least this absurdity.

(Andrey Illesh, Andrey Pralnikov. Report from Chernobyl)

City government of Pripyat

The Soviet leadership, both at the local and state levels, in the history of Chernobyl is usually scolded: for slow reaction, unpreparedness, concealment of information. "The Chronicle of the Dead City" is evidence from the other side. Alexander Esaulov at the time of the accident was deputy chairman of the Pripyat city executive committee - in other words, the mayor of Pripyat - and talks about the stupor, hard work and the specifics of managing the evacuated city.

« There were so many problems, they were so atypical that they simply gave up. We worked in unique, exceptional conditions, in which no city hall in the world has worked: we worked in a city that does not exist, a city that existed only as an administrative unit,

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as a certain number of residential buildings, shops, sports facilities that suddenly became uninhabited, from which the tart smell of human sweat very soon disappeared, and the deadening smell of abandonment and emptiness entered forever. In exceptional conditions, the questions were exceptional: how to ensure the protection of abandoned apartments, shops and other objects, if it is dangerous to be in the zone? How to prevent fires if you can’t turn off the electricity, because they didn’t know right away that they would leave the city forever, and there were a lot of food left in the refrigerators, after all, it was before the holidays. In addition, there were a lot of products in stores and commercial warehouses, and it was also unknown what to do with them. What if a person became ill and lost consciousness, as was the case with the telephone operator Miskevich, who worked at the communication center, if an abandoned paralyzed grandmother was found, and the medical unit had already been completely evacuated? What to do with the proceeds from stores that have been working since the morning, if the bank does not accept money, because it is “dirty”, and, by the way, it is doing it right. How to feed people if the last working cafe "Olympia" is abandoned, since the cooks have not been changed for more than a day, and they are also people, and they have children, and the cafe itself has been smashed and looted clean. There were a decent number of people left in Pripyat: the Jupiter plant was still working, fulfilling the monthly plan, then the unique equipment that could not be left was dismantled there. Many workers of the station and construction organizations remained, who take an active part in the liquidation of the accident - they simply have nowhere to live yet.<…>

View of the city of Pripyat in the first days after the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plantPhoto: RIA Novosti

How to refuel cars if coupons and vouchers remain in the zone with such high levels that it is not safe to enter there even for a minute, and the gas station driver arrived either from Polessky or from Borodyanka, and he will, of course, be required to report on the entire form - in the same place they do not yet know that we have a real war! »

(Alexander Esaulov. Chernobyl. Chronicle of the Dead City. M., 2006)

Journalists "Pravda" in 1987

Reports by a Pravda journalist in 1987, notable as an uncomplicated example of the condo Soviet newspaper style and boundless faith in the Politburo - what is called, "so bad it's already good." Now they don't do that anymore.

« Soon we, the special correspondents of Pravda - M. Odinets, L. Nazarenko and the author - decided to organize fishing on the Dnieper ourselves, given the current situation, on a purely scientific basis. Now they can’t do without scientists and specialists, they won’t believe it, and therefore Candidate of Technical Sciences V. Pyzhov, senior ichthyologist from the Fisheries Research Institute O. Toporovsky, inspectors S. Miropolsky, V. Zavorotny and correspondents gathered on board the Finval. Our expedition was headed by Petr Ivanovich Yurchenko - a man known in Kyiv as a storm of poachers, who, unfortunately, are still quite a few on the river.

We are armed with the latest technology. Unfortunately, not with fishing rods and spinning rods, but with dosimeters.<…>

Our task is still special - to check whether it is possible for anglers who have the opening of the season in mid-June to calmly do what they love - to fish, sunbathe, swim, in short, relax. And what could be more beautiful than fishing on the Dnieper?!

Unfortunately, there are a lot of rumors… Like, “you can’t go into the water”, “the river is poisoned”, “the fish is now radioactive”, “it needs to cut off its head and fins”, etc. etc.<…>

In 1986, a group of foreign correspondents visited the Makarovsky district of the Kyiv region, to whose settlements residents were evacuated from the area of ​​the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. In the photo: foreign journalists observe how dosimetric control is carried out on open water bodiesPhoto: Alexey Poddubny / TASS

From the first days of the accident, being in its zone, we could thoroughly study everything related to radiation, we perfectly understood that it was not worth risking our health in vain. We knew that the Ministry of Health of the Ukrainian SSR allowed swimming, and therefore, before going fishing, we bathed in the Dnieper with pleasure. And they swam, and had fun, and took pictures for memory, however, they did not dare to publish these pictures: it is not customary to show correspondents in this form on the pages of the newspaper ...<…>

And now the fish are already laid out on a table standing near the stern of the ship. And Toporovsky begins to rite over them with his instruments. Dosimetric studies show that neither in the gills, nor in the insides of pike, catfish, pike perch, tench, crucian carp, nor in their fins, tail, there are any traces of increased radiation.

“But this is only a part of the operation,” the district fish inspector S. Miropolsky, who took an active part in fish dosimetry, cheerfully clarifies. “Now they need to be boiled, fried and eaten.”

“But this is only a part of the operation,” the district fish inspector S. Miropolsky, who took an active part in fish dosimetry, cheerfully clarifies. “Now they need to be boiled, fried and eaten.”

And now from the galley comes the appetizing aroma of yushka. We eat two, three bowls, but we can't stop. Fried pike perch, crucian carp, tench are also good ...

I don’t want to leave the island, but we have to - in the evening we agreed to meet in Chernobyl. We are returning to Kyiv... And a few days later we are talking with Yu. A. Izrael, chairman of the USSR State Committee for Hydrometeorology and Environmental Control.

“We were also tortured with questions: is it possible to swim? To fish? It is possible and necessary! .. And it is a pity that you report your fishing after it, and not in advance - I would definitely go with you! »

(Vladimir Gubarev. Glow over Pripyat. Notes of a journalist. M., 1987)

The trial of the leadership of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant

In July 1987, a trial took place - six members of the management of the nuclear power plant were brought to justice (the hearings were held in a semi-closed mode, the materials were partly posted on pripyat-city.ru). Anatoly Dyatlov, Deputy Chief Engineer of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, on the one hand, was injured in the accident - due to exposure, he developed radiation sickness, and on the other hand, he was found guilty and sentenced to ten years in prison. In his memoirs, he tells what the Chernobyl tragedy looked like for him.

« Judgment is like a court. Ordinary Soviet. Everything was predetermined. After two meetings in June 1986, the Interdepartmental Scientific and Technical Council chaired by Academician A.P. Aleksandrov, where employees of the Ministry of Medium Machine Building dominated - the authors of the reactor project - an unambiguous version was announced about the guilt of the operational personnel. Other considerations, and they were then, were discarded as unnecessary.<…>

Here by the way to mention the article. I was convicted under article 220 of the Criminal Code of the Ukrainian SSR for improper operation of explosive enterprises. Nuclear power plants are not included in the list of explosive enterprises in the USSR. The forensic-technical expert commission retroactively classified the nuclear power plant as a potentially explosive enterprise. For the court, this was enough to apply the article. This is not the place to disassemble explosive or not nuclear power plants - it is clearly illegal to establish retroactively and apply an article of the Criminal Code. But who will tell the Supreme Court? There was someone, and he acted on their orders. Anything will be explosive if the design rules are not followed.

And then, what does potentially explosive mean? Here, Soviet televisions regularly explode, several dozen people die every year. Where to take them? Who is guilty?

Defendants in the case of the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant (from left to right): Chernobyl director Viktor Bryukhanov, deputy chief engineer Anatoly Dyatlov, chief engineer Nikolai Fomin during the trialPhoto: Igor Kostin / RIA Novosti

A stumbling block for the Soviet court would be a lawsuit for the death of viewers. After all, with all the desire, you can’t blame the viewers for sitting in front of the TV without helmets and bulletproof vests. Blame the company? State? Does this mean the state is to blame? Soviet something? The court will not tolerate such a perversion of principles. A person is guilty before the state - yes. And if not, then no one. For seven decades, our courts have only turned the nut in one direction. How many recent years there has been a talk about independence, independence of the courts, serving the law and only the law.

Myths and facts

On April 26, 1986, there was an accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Experts from all over the world are still eliminating the consequences of the largest catastrophe in the history of the peaceful atom.

A modernization program was carried out in the Russian nuclear industry, obsolete technological solutions were almost completely revised and systems were developed that, according to experts, completely exclude the possibility of such an accident.

We talk about the myths that surround the Chernobyl accident and the lessons learned from it.

DATA

The biggest disaster in the history of peaceful atom

The construction of the first stage of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant began in 1970, the city of Pripyat was built nearby for the maintenance personnel. On September 27, 1977, the first power unit of the station with an RBMK-1000 reactor with a capacity of 1 thousand MW was connected to the power system of the Soviet Union. Later, three more power units were put into operation, the annual power generation of the station amounted to 29 billion kilowatt-hours.

On September 9, 1982, the first accident occurred at the Chernobyl NPP - during the trial run of the 1st power unit, one of the reactor's technological channels collapsed, and the graphite laying of the core was deformed. There were no casualties, the liquidation of the consequences of the emergency took about three months.

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It was planned to shut down the reactor (at the same time, the emergency cooling system was turned off as planned) and measure the generator performance.

It was not possible to safely shut down the reactor. At 01:23 Moscow time, an explosion and fire occurred at the power unit.

The emergency was the largest disaster in the history of nuclear energy: the reactor core was completely destroyed, the building of the power unit partially collapsed, and there was a significant release of radioactive materials into the environment.

One person died directly in the explosion - pump operator Valery Khodemchuk (his body could not be found under the rubble), in the morning of the same day in the medical unit, Vladimir Shashenok, an engineer adjusting the automation system, died from burns and a spinal injury.

On April 27, the city of Pripyat (47 thousand 500 people) was evacuated, and in the following days, the population of the 10-kilometer zone around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. In total, during May 1986, about 116 thousand people were resettled from 188 settlements in the 30-kilometer exclusion zone around the station.

The intense fire lasted 10 days, during which time the total release of radioactive materials into the environment amounted to about 14 exabecquerels (about 380 million curies).

More than 200 thousand square meters were exposed to radioactive contamination. km, of which 70% - on the territory of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia.

The most polluted were the northern regions of the Kyiv and Zhytomyr regions. Ukrainian SSR, Gomel region Byelorussian SSR and Bryansk region. RSFSR.

Radioactive fallout fell in the Leningrad region, Mordovia and Chuvashia.

Subsequently, pollution has been noted in Norway, Finland and Sweden.

The first brief official message about the emergency was transmitted to TASS on April 28. According to the former general secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU Mikhail Gorbachev, said in an interview with the BBC in 2006, the May Day holiday demonstrations in Kiev and other cities were not canceled due to the fact that the country's leadership did not have a "full picture of what had happened" and feared panic among the population. Only on May 14, Mikhail Gorbachev made a televised address in which he spoke about the true scale of the incident.

The Soviet State Commission to Investigate the Causes of the Emergency placed responsibility for the catastrophe on the management and operational personnel of the station. The Nuclear Safety Advisory Committee (INSAG) set up by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in its 1986 report confirmed the conclusions of the Soviet commission.

Tassovtsy in Chernobyl

One of the first journalists to the scene of the accident in the Ukrainian Polissya, to tell the truth about a man-made disaster unprecedented in history, was Vladimir Itkin from Tassov. As a real hero-reporter, he showed himself during the disaster. His materials were published in almost all newspapers of the country.

And just a few days after the explosion, the world was shocked by photographs of the smoking ruins of the fourth power unit, which were taken by TASS photojournalist Valery Zufarov and his Ukrainian colleague Vladimir Repik. Then, in the early days, flying around the power plant in a helicopter together with scientists and specialists, fixing all the details of the atomic release, they did not think about the consequences for their health. The helicopter from which the reporters filmed hovered just 25 meters above the poisonous abyss.

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Valery already knew that he had "grabbed" a huge dose, but continued to fulfill his professional duty, creating a photographic chronicle of this tragedy for posterity.

Reporters worked at the mouth of the reactor, during the construction of the sarcophagus.

Valery paid for these pictures with an untimely death in 1996. Zufarov has many awards - including the "Golden Eye" awarded by World Press Photo.

Among the Tassov journalists who have the status of a liquidator of the consequences of the Chernobyl accident is Valery Demidetsky, a correspondent in Chisinau. In the fall of 1986, he was sent to Chernobyl as a person who had already dealt with the atom - Valery served on a nuclear submarine and knew what the radiation hazard was.

"Most of all," he recalls, "people were amazed there. Real heroes. They understood well what they were doing, working day and night. Pripyat struck. The handsome city where the nuclear power plant workers lived resembled the Tarkovsky Stalker zone. houses, scattered children's toys, thousands of cars abandoned by residents.

- According to TASS

Hiking in hell

One of the first who took part in the liquidation of the accident were firefighters. The signal about a fire at the nuclear power plant was received on April 26, 1986 at 01:28. By morning, 240 people of the personnel of the Kyiv Regional Fire Protection Department were in the accident zone.

The government commission turned to the chemical defense troops to assess the radiation situation and to military helicopter pilots to assist in extinguishing the fire in the core. At that time, several thousand people worked at the emergency site.

Representatives of the radiation control service, the Civil Defense Forces, the Chemical Troops of the Ministry of Defense, the State Hydrometeorological Service and the Ministry of Health worked in the accident zone.

In addition to liquidating the accident, their task included measuring the radiation situation at the nuclear power plant and studying the radioactive contamination of natural environments, evacuating the population, and protecting the exclusion zone that was established after the disaster.

Doctors monitored the irradiated and carried out the necessary therapeutic and preventive measures.

In particular, at different stages of liquidation of the consequences of the accident, the following were involved:

From 16 to 30 thousand people from different departments for decontamination work;

More than 210 military units and subdivisions with a total number of 340 thousand military personnel, of which more than 90 thousand military personnel during the most acute period from April to December 1986;

18.5 thousand employees of internal affairs bodies;

Over 7 thousand radiological laboratories and sanitary and epidemiological stations;

In total, about 600 thousand liquidators from all over the former USSR took part in fire fighting and clearing.

Immediately after the accident, the work of the station was stopped. The mine of the exploded reactor with burning graphite was covered from helicopters with a mixture of boron carbide, lead and dolomite, and after the completion of the active stage of the accident - with latex, rubber and other dust-absorbing solutions (in total, by the end of June, about 11 thousand 400 tons of dry and liquid materials were dumped).

After the first, most acute, stage, all efforts to localize the accident were focused on creating a special protective structure called a sarcophagus ("Shelter" object).

At the end of May 1986, a special organization was formed, consisting of several construction and installation departments, concrete plants, departments of mechanization, motor transport, power supply, etc. The work was carried out around the clock, in shifts, the number of which reached 10 thousand people.

In the period from July to November 1986, a concrete sarcophagus with a height of more than 50 m and external dimensions of 200 by 200 m was built, covering the 4th power unit of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, after which the release of radioactive elements ceased. During construction, an accident occurred: on October 2, the Mi-8 helicopter caught on the cable of a crane with its blades and fell on the territory of the station, killing four crew members.

Inside the "Shelter" there is at least 95% of the irradiated nuclear fuel from the destroyed reactor, including about 180 tons of uranium-235, as well as about 70 thousand tons of radioactive metal, concrete, glassy mass, several tens of tons of radioactive dust with a total with an activity of more than 2 million curies.

Shelter under threat

The world's largest international structures - from energy concerns to financial corporations - continue to assist Ukraine in solving the problems of the final cleanup of the Chernobyl zone.

The main drawback of the sarcophagus is its leakage (the total area of ​​the cracks reaches 1 thousand square meters).

The guaranteed service life of the old Shelter was calculated until 2006, so in 1997 the G7 countries agreed on the need to build Shelter-2, which would cover the outdated structure.

At present, a large protective structure "New Safe Confinement" is being built - an arch that will be pushed over the "Shelter". In April 2019, it was reported that it was 99% ready and had undergone a trial three-day operation.

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Work on the construction of the second sarcophagus was supposed to be completed in 2015, but was postponed more than once. The main reason for the delay is said to be "a serious lack of funds".

The total cost of completing the project, which includes the construction of the sarcophagus, is 2.15 billion euros. At the same time, the cost of building the sarcophagus itself is 1.5 billion euros.

675 million euros provided by the EBRD. If necessary, the bank is ready to finance the budget deficit for this project.

Up to 10 million euros (5 million euros annually) - an additional contribution to the Chernobyl fund - was decided to be made in 2016-2017 by the Russian government.

180 million euros were pledged by other international donors.

$40 million intended to provide the United States.

Some Arab countries and the People's Republic of China have also expressed their desire to make donations to the Chernobyl Fund.

Myths about the accident

There is a huge gap between scientific knowledge about the consequences of the accident and public opinion. The latter, in the overwhelming majority of cases, is influenced by the developed Chernobyl mythology, which has little to do with the real consequences of the disaster, the Institute for the Problems of the Safe Development of Nuclear Energy of the Russian Academy of Sciences (IBRAE RAN) notes.

Inadequate perception of radiation hazard, according to experts, has objective specific historical reasons, including:

Silence by the state of the causes and real consequences of the accident;

Ignorance by the population of the elementary foundations of the physics of processes occurring both in the field of nuclear energy and in the field of radiation and radioactive impact;

The hysteria in the media provoked by the mentioned reasons;

Numerous problems of a social nature of a federal scale, which have become good ground for the rapid formation of myths, etc.

Indirect damage from the accident, associated with socio-psychological and socio-economic consequences, is much higher than the direct damage from the action of Chernobyl radiation.

Myth 1.

The accident had a catastrophic effect on the health of tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of people

According to the Russian National Radiation and Epidemiological Register (NRER), radiation sickness was detected in 134 people who were on the emergency block on the first day. Of these, 28 died within a few months after the accident (27 in Russia), 20 died of various causes within 20 years.

Over the past 30 years, NRER recorded 122 cases of leukemia among the liquidators. 37 of them could be induced by Chernobyl radiation. There was no increase in the number of diseases with other types of oncology among the liquidators compared to other groups of the population.

Between 1986 and 2011, out of 195,000 Russian liquidators registered with the NRER, about 40,000 people died from various causes, while the overall mortality rates did not exceed the corresponding average values ​​for the population of the Russian Federation.

According to the NRER data at the end of 2015, out of 993 cases of thyroid cancer in children and adolescents (at the time of the accident), 99 could be related to radiation exposure.

No other consequences for the population were recorded, which completely refutes all the prevailing myths and stereotypes about the scale of the radiological consequences of the accident for public health, experts say. These same conclusions were confirmed 30 years after the disaster.

Curie, becquerel, sievert - what's the difference

Radioactivity is the ability of some natural elements and artificial radioactive isotopes to spontaneously decay, while emitting radiation invisible and imperceptible to humans.

Two units are used to measure the amount of a radioactive substance or its activity: the off-system unit curie and unit becquerel, adopted in the International System of Units (SI).

The environment and living organisms are affected by the ionizing effect of radiation, which is characterized by the dose of radiation or exposure.

The higher the radiation dose, the greater the degree of ionization. The same dose can accumulate over different times, and the biological effect of irradiation depends not only on the magnitude of the dose, but also on the time of its accumulation. The faster the dose is received, the greater its damaging effect.

Different types of radiation create a different damaging effect at the same dose of radiation. All national and international standards are set in equivalent radiation dose. The off-system unit of this dose is rem, and in the SI system - sievert(Sv).

Rafael Arutyunyan, First Deputy Director of the Institute for the Safe Development of Nuclear Energy of the Russian Academy of Sciences, clarifies that if we analyze the additional doses accumulated by the inhabitants of the Chernobyl zones over the years since the accident, out of the 2.8 million Russians who found themselves in the area of ​​impact:

2.6 million received less than 10 millisieverts. This is five to seven times less than the average global exposure dose from natural background radiation;

Fewer than 2,000 people received additional doses greater than 120 millisieverts. This is one and a half to two times less than the radiation doses of residents of countries such as Finland.

It is for this reason, the scientist believes, that no radiological consequences are observed and cannot be observed among the population, except for the thyroid cancer already noted above.

According to experts from the Scientific Center for Radiation Medicine of the Academy of Medical Sciences of Ukraine, out of 2.34 million people living in the contaminated territories of Ukraine, about 94,800 people died from cancers of various origins in the 12 years after the disaster, about 750 additionally died due to "Chernobyl" cancers. Human.

For comparison: among 2.8 million people, regardless of their place of residence, every year from cancers not related to the radiation factor, the mortality rate is from 4 to 6 thousand, that is, in 30 years - from 90 to 170 thousand deaths.

What doses of radiation are lethal

The ubiquitous natural radiation background, as well as some medical procedures, result in each person receiving an average equivalent radiation dose of 2 to 5 millisieverts annually.

For people professionally involved in radioactive materials, the annual equivalent dose should not exceed 20 millisieverts.

A lethal dose is considered to be 8 sieverts, and the half-survival dose at which half of the exposed group of people dies is 4-5 sieverts.

At the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, about a thousand people who were near the reactor at the time of the disaster received doses from 2 to 20 sieverts, which in some cases turned out to be fatal.

In liquidators, the average dose was about 120 millisieverts.

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Myth 2.

The genetic consequences of the Chernobyl accident for humanity are terrible

According to Harutyunyan, over 60 years of detailed scientific research, world science has not observed any genetic defects in descendants due to radiation exposure of their parents.

This conclusion is confirmed by the results of constant monitoring of both the victims in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the next generation.

No excess of genetic deviations relative to the average data for the country was recorded.

20 years after Chernobyl, the International Commission on Radiological Protection, in its 2007 recommendations, lowered the value of hypothetical risks by almost 10 times.

At the same time, there are other opinions. According to the research of Doctor of Agricultural Sciences Valery Glazko:

After the catastrophe, not everyone who should have been born is born.

Less specialized, but with a higher resistance to the action of adverse environmental factors, forms are predominantly reproduced.

The response to the same doses of ionizing radiation depends on its novelty for the population.

The scientist believes that the real consequences of the Chernobyl accident for human populations will be available for analysis by 2026, since the generation that was directly affected by the accident is only now beginning to start families and give birth to children.

Myth 3.

Nature suffered from the accident at a nuclear power plant even more than man

In Chernobyl, an unprecedentedly large release of radionuclides into the atmosphere occurred; on this basis, the Chernobyl accident is considered the most severe man-made accident in human history. To date, almost everywhere, with the exception of the most contaminated areas, the dose rate has returned to the background level.

The consequences of irradiation for flora and fauna were noticeable only in the immediate vicinity of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant within the exclusion zone.

The paradigm of radioecology is such that if a person is protected, then the environment is protected with a huge margin, Professor Harutyunyan notes. If the impact on human health of a radiation incident is minimal, then its impact on nature will be even less. The threshold for the manifestation of negative impacts on flora and fauna is 100 times higher than for humans.

The impact on nature after the accident was observed only near the destroyed power unit, where the dose of irradiation of trees for 2 weeks reached 2000 roentgens (in the so-called "red forest"). At the moment, the entire natural environment, even in this place, has completely recovered and even flourished due to a sharp decrease in anthropogenic impact.

Myth 4.

The resettlement of people from the city of Pripyat and the surrounding areas was poorly organized

The evacuation of the inhabitants of the city of 50,000 was carried out quickly, Harutyunyan claims. Despite the fact that, according to the regulations then in force, evacuation was mandatory only in the event that a dose of 750 mSv was reached, the decision on it was made at a predicted dose level of less than 250 mSv. Which is quite consistent with today's understanding of the criteria for emergency evacuation. The information that people received large doses of radiation exposure during the evacuation is not true, the scientist is sure.