valery legasov tapes transcript

For instance, we are not clear why there was not complete conformity in the decline of radioactivity in reactor number 4. Between 25 and 75 rem is a matter for the local authorities. So the main work was undertaken by Abaghian Armen Artavazdovich, the Director of VNIIAES, the Institute of Atomic Energy Stations, that is presently under the Ministry of Atomic Energy and was under the Ministry of Energy earlier. Comrade SOROKA was Deputy to the General, Prosecutor of the USSR and Fyodor Shcherbak, the head of one of the i, divisions of the State Security Committee, was included in the composition of the, Governmental Commission, and the Deputy Chairman of the CM of. Since when has this mistake begun to be corrected? The same was true for all materials, say, magnesium oxide, containing carbon. But nobody thought of nuclear energy as a large-scale phenomenon. After decontamination was carried out, the level of activity in this room lowered but still remained relatively high, reaching tens and sometimes hundreds of milliroentgens per hour at certain spots and up to a roentgen per hour at other spots in the engine room. Valery Legasov was a Soviet chemist who investigated what caused the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster on April 26, 1986. All in all, this quick and diligent work of the people that were delivering the materials resulted in the reactor being plugged around the 2nd of May. Then the fuel began to heat up due to a bead there; and there was a release of already fission products such as Caesium and Strontium until the 20-22 of May when the contaminated areas were known. The original Russian transcripts from the recorded tapes of Valery Legasov. All this was rechecked at other stationsthe same spots, the same weld beadsand not all was perfect. After I arrived at the institute, they met me, washed me, cleaned me as much as it was possible. There is not a single organization in the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union or in the national academies that could develop this philosophy. He regularly found proper solutions when one or the other difficult situation arose. [7] Viktor Alekseyevich Sidorenko called for immediate evacuation of Pripyat, which Legasov supported, as the situation was expected to deteriorate in the town, and this decision was approved by Shcherbina. I will not describe the whole thing in detail here. But fortunately, during the entire period of work, and to this day, all the diagnostic wells have shown that the groundwater has always been clean, and the service wells have never been used. And above that article, there was a lousy illustration, in which in front of a half-wrecked cooling tower, a young moustached Frenchman is trying to explain to a Russian bear how to build those cooling towers, while the bear has put a finger in his mouth and hardly understands that the quality of the cooling tower is as essential to the quality of a nuclear station as the reactor itself. It was already clear to us that people injured by radiation, except for those who worked at the Chernobyl station at the time of the accident, are expected to be unlikely; that the control of the population is thorough; that if the countries that came under the nuclear fallout from the accident took proper informational and sanitary measures, then there will be no real consequences to the health of the people. If you would wish to read them, then here, we translated them for English readers: Tape 1 side A In this part Legasov speaks about his first days in the accident zone. We could only kick ourselves for not having external automatic dosimetry devices set up around the station, that would record the telemetry about radiation conditions within, say, 1 km, 2 km, 4 km and 10 km radius. For example, the press spent a lot of time on the so-called needle which was fiddled with for a long time. The trip was in the evening. The report of minister Efim Pavlovich Slavsky began - and it was quite dull, standard and mundane. Equipment can never work at 100 per cent conditions specified by the project, and fully exclude all human error, accidental or perhaps even intentional. Because originally the plan was to build a dome made entirely of concrete over the wreckage. Formally however I had to be replaced in Silaevs team by Eugeny Petrovich Ryazantsev - deputy of the director of our Nuclear Energy Institute. As such, it became clear that lead would be an effective measure. So all the nitrogen we suppliedand we did find a place for to supplying itleaked out of the zone and cooled nothing. Happily, a sufficiently large amount (forty tonnes) of boron carbide was available from an uncontaminated stockpile, and it was quickly dropped into the reactor by helicopters. They talked to people that were evacuated or with people that worked on reactor number 4, on decontamination and this information was broadcasted. And a good reactor specialist was one who had mastered the design of a particular reactor, who could ably calculate, say, the zone, who knew all the accidents that happen at a station, who could come to any facility and assist in its physical and organisatorial launch, quickly figure out what was happening there, and report to the management of the institute or the Ministry. By this time General Ivanov had arrived; he would lead the civil defence group of that region and he had to organize preparatory measures for possible evacuation of civilians and for firsthand decontamination work. Legasov: Even during the war, when a retreat was planned from a city, it was already determined in advance who would remain undercover, who would be with the army, etc. passed it. I said the same to them but how can one get access to Gorbachev for a back-and-forth. Even though we have Atomenergoizdatformerly called Atomizdatmedical publishing houses, the Knowledge society, it turned out that prepared literature that could quickly be distributed among the people to explain, for example, what doses are extremely dangerous for humans, how to behave when a person is inside a zone of increased radiation exposure, a system that could correctly advise on what to measure, how to measure, how to treat fruits and vegetables, the surface of which could be contaminated with beta, gamma, alpha radiationall this literature was totally absent. Or manually, using the special AZ-5 button to reset the emergency rods. I fought against this project from May; an absolutely useless project. I never witnessed a single case where specialists from the SA [Soviet Army] or a USSR citizen, somehow trying to do their work, or felt like they were forced to do difficult or dangerous work. He had to leave the institute. This launch was carried out successfully. in Law, National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy (Graduated 2022) 3 y Related None of them unequivocally corresponds to all the experimental facts; that is why discussions are ongoing. Anatoly Petrovich had a deputy for nuclear energy earlier, Eugeny Petrovich Ryazantsev. Accordingly, the Minister was called immediately, and all the listed experts who had to depart were summoned. That is why the words of Nikolai Ivanovich Ryzhkov should be understood in a much wider context. It is very important for me that you understand that had the international philosophy been adopted, had each reactor been inside a containment, then the RBMK reactor would simply not exist. ", "Responsabilites Occidentales Dans les Consequences Sanitaires de la Catastrophe de Tchernobyl, en Bielorussie, Ukraine et Russie", "Western responsibility regarding the health consequences of the Chernobyl catastrophe in Belarus, the Ukraine and Russia", "Chernobyl scientist's suicide described", " - .. Because even though the more than 600 rooms of the 3rd block were cleaned, washed, the radiation condition in the engine room nevertheless remained quite high. This question was discussed at the Government Commission and was escalated to higher levels, and ultimately it was decided to defer the issue and that in the next year, 1987, and possibly in 1988, no construction work will be done on 5th and 6th blocks. For example, the head of the district executive committee, Plyushch, had to make preparations for the evacuation. Minatomenergo led the work on the preparations to launch the 1st and 2nd blocks and had already started to gradually make their way into the 3rd block to assess its condition. Although, of course, the Compton effect had its share in the radiation environment; somewhere around 10 milliroentgens per hour and maybe even less than 10 milliroentgens per hour was radiated from reactor number 4. And that it was necessary to put nuclear energy sources into operation, to do this quickly. The Ministry of Power Engineering was the one who designed the equipment. Then on the 2nd of May, they took part in the meeting carried out in the Chernobyl regional party committee together with comrade Scherbicky (who was here for the first time). [7] Under his leadership, a scientific school was created in the newest section of inorganic chemistry chemistry of noble gases. In particular, it must be said that not all measures were prudent. On the one hand, it melted and we did find evidence of that. Well there is an *abridged* transcript at which I've taken the liberty of Google-Translating (not easy due to character limits) to Valery Legasov tape recordings 7.6K views View upvotes 6 Alexander Rumiantsev B.A. But I should tell you that the Minsk station, in particular, wouldnt pose any danger. In another instance, the GeoChem institute had provided report approved by academician Velikhov, that was based on their measurements that more than 50% of the reactors contents had escaped its core and the Chernobyl power plant territory. Before the start of the meeting, Nikolai Ivanovich Yermakov, the head of the 16th head office of the Ministry of Medium Machine Building, under whose supervision our entire university was, walked up and said calmly but with some concern, that an unpleasant accident had happened at the Chernobyl Station. Any approach to nuclear safety of a technologically complex and potentially dangerous device must have three elements. It seems to me that they were overly modest and careful when writing about what happened at the station itself, why the accident occurred, whose fault it was, whether the reactor was defective or the actions of the staff were wrong. Perhaps that was a wrong decision, because some of those cars were contaminated, and the dosimetric posts had not yet been organized to control the contamination levels on such vehicles . But there was only one such telegram. But they went in the direction of increasing the coastdown time of the turbine, when, at this time, there already were diesel generators that could output at the required electrotechnical levels two to three times quicker than those installed at the Chernobyl station. If there were containments, then RBMK would simply not exist; as it didnt anywhere in the world, this type of reactor. The monstrosity of the mistakes lies in the philosophy of safety. I already had 180 roentgens in me and, thank God, I knew how to act in situations like these. All this has to be done. Also, research groups under which particularly a lot of work was done were led by Kulakov, Borovoi, for example) had toand this was their primary objectivethoroughly investigate the premises of reactor number 4. All of this had to be invented and organized on the spot, successfully or otherwise. Since after the release, some of the radioactivity got into the water, the next step to protect, say, the Dnieper sea [sic] and the entire water basin, was the construction of dams that included Celites, that is, substances capable of absorbing radioactive particles and radionuclides should they appear in the water in small or large rivers. You approach the gates of the Skazochniy Pioneer Camp. [1] Around 910 May, Gorbachev requested a chronology of events and the cause of the accident in preparation for an interview, which Legasov provided in writing with a few edits from other investigators. Therefore, we must declare the evacuation right away. On the roofs of the engine room and on station territory graphite blocks were scattered, some intact and some in pieces. But it was very quickly discovered that the water itself did not have much contamination, but the silt was affected. I was in the same car as the head of Kiev Oblast Executive Committee, Plyushch, who was also a part of the Government Commission. I have the transcript for the first tape, which I want to post first, but it is in Russian and I need it translated in English. Nikolai Ivanovich ERMAKOV, Chief of the 16th, Main Department, informed me about this. This was a sort of combination of the Western experience with our own, with the level of the machine-building industry in the Soviet Unionwhich cannot fulfill certain requirements. Make sure to subscribe to his Youtube channel. The third groupimplementers, not researchers; these were mostly the army divisions began decontaminating the rooms in the 1st and 2nd block, and also prepared for the construction of the sarcophagus, because the design was already in progress in Moscow. What they collected, what was published, of course, is of tremendous importance from a historical and archival point of view as live documentary material. the morning at the Ministry, which owns the Institute of Atomic Energy. He was appointed by the Soviet Government to investigate the Chernobyl disaster less than 24 hours after it occurred. I will repeat myself that groundwater was relatively close to the surface under the station. And since Gosplan strictly specified the funding for nuclear energy, this would mean 20-30 per cent fewer nuclear power plants would be built in a given time. And this could have happened a few years ago. Legasov: But I said so at the Politburo. But again, a commission led by comrade Voropaev was created. We were moving towards Chernobyl. But the growth was not qualitative but quantitative. [1] Spending four months in and around Chernobyl,[23] he received a high dose of radiation. God, I knew how to act in situations like these not have much contamination, but the silt affected. Will repeat myself that groundwater was relatively close to the surface Under the station project. Regularly found proper solutions when one or the other difficult situation arose, and all the listed experts had! Four months in and around Chernobyl, [ 23 ] he received high... 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