At what time the Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded. Chernobyl: the biggest bluff of the 21st century. Sabotage at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Lack of "safety culture"

On the night of April 26, 1986, at the fourth power unit of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant (ChNPP), located in Ukraine (at that time, the Ukrainian SSR) on the right bank of the Pripyat River, 12 kilometers from the city of Chernobyl, Kiev region, the largest accident in the history of world nuclear power occurred ...

The fourth power unit of the ChNPP was put into commercial operation in December 1983.

On April 25, 1986, at the Chernobyl NPP, it was planned to carry out design tests of one of the safety systems at the fourth power unit, after which the reactor was planned to be shut down for scheduled renovation works... During the tests, it was supposed to de-energize the NPP equipment and use the mechanical energy of rotation of stopping turbine generators (the so-called run-out) to ensure the operability of the power unit's safety systems. Due to dispatching restrictions, the shutdown of the reactor was postponed several times, which caused certain difficulties in controlling the reactor power.

On April 26, at 01:24 am, an uncontrolled increase in power occurred, which led to explosions and the destruction of a significant part of the reactor plant. Due to the explosion of the reactor and the ensuing fire at the power unit, a significant amount of radioactive substances was released into the environment.

The measures taken in the following days to fill the reactor with inert materials led at first to a decrease in the power of the radioactive release, but then the rise in temperature inside the destroyed reactor shaft led to an increase in the amount of radioactive substances released into the atmosphere. Radionuclide emissions decreased significantly only by the end of the first decade of May 1986.

At a meeting on May 16, the government commission made a decision on the long-term conservation of the destroyed power unit. On May 20, an order was issued by the Ministry of Medium Machine Building "On the organization of construction management at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant", in accordance with which work began on the creation of the "Shelter" structure. The construction of this facility with the involvement of about 90 thousand builders lasted 206 days from June to November 1986. On November 30, 1986, by the decision of the state commission, the mothballed fourth power unit of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant was accepted for maintenance.

The fission products of nuclear fuel released from the destroyed reactor into the atmosphere were carried by air currents to large areas, causing their radioactive contamination not only near nuclear power plants within the borders of Ukraine, Russia and Belarus, but also hundreds and even thousands of kilometers from the accident site. The territories of many countries have been exposed to radioactive contamination.

As a result of the accident, the territories of 17 European countries with a total area of ​​207.5 thousand square kilometers were exposed to radioactive contamination with cesium-137 with levels above 1 Ci / km 2 (37 kBq / m2). The territories of Ukraine (37.63 thousand square kilometers), Belarus (43.5 thousand square kilometers), and the European part of Russia (59.3 thousand square kilometers) were significantly contaminated with cesium-137.

In Russia, 19 subjects were exposed to radiation contamination with cesium-137. The most polluted regions are Bryansk (11.8 thousand square kilometers of contaminated areas), Kaluga (4.9 thousand square kilometers), Tula (11.6 thousand square kilometers) and Orlov (8.9 thousand square kilometers).

About 60 thousand square kilometers of territories contaminated with cesium-137 with levels above 1 Ci / km 2 are located outside the former USSR. The territories of Austria, Germany, Italy, Great Britain, Sweden, Finland, Norway and a number of other countries of Western Europe have been contaminated.

A significant part of the territory of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus was contaminated at a level exceeding 5 Ci / km 2 (185 kBq / m2). Agricultural land with an area of ​​almost 52 thousand square kilometers was affected by cesium-137 and strontium-90 with half-lives of 30 and 28 years, respectively.

Immediately after the disaster, 31 people died, and 600 thousand liquidators who took part in extinguishing the fires and clearing them received high doses of radiation. Almost 8.4 million residents of Belarus, Ukraine and Russia were exposed to radioactive exposure, of which almost 404 thousand people were resettled.

Due to a very high radioactive background after the accident, the operation of the nuclear power plant was stopped. After the decontamination of the contaminated area and the construction of the Shelter object, on October 1, 1986, the first power unit of the Chernobyl NPP was launched, on November 5, the second, and on December 4, 1987, the third power unit of the station was put into operation.

In accordance with the Memorandum signed in 1995 between Ukraine, the G7 states and the European Union Commission, on November 30, 1996, it was decided to permanently shut down the first power unit, and on March 15, 1999, the second power unit.

On December 11, 1998, the Law of Ukraine "On general principles subsequent operation and decommissioning of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and the transformation of the destroyed fourth power unit of this nuclear power plant into an environmentally safe system. "

The Chernobyl NPP stopped generating electricity on December 15, 2000, when the third power unit was permanently shut down.

In December 2003, the UN General Assembly supported the decision of the Council of CIS Heads of State to proclaim April 26 as the International Day of Remembrance for Victims of Radiation Accidents and Catastrophes, and also called on all UN member states to celebrate this International Day and hold relevant events within its framework.

The material was prepared on the basis of information from RIA Novosti and open sources

general information

For more than three decades, the Chernobyl plant has remained more than eloquent evidence of the dire consequences of careless and irresponsible handling of the so-called “peaceful atom”. It was assumed that the nuclear power plant would compensate for the shortage of electricity that took place in the 60s and 70s in the central regions of Ukraine, but ultimately its operation turned into a disaster, the echoes of which are still felt today. The word "Chernobyl" has become a household word, symbolizing a nuclear catastrophe, radiation contamination, radiation sickness, an empty and lifeless space, where everything that could become extinct has become extinct. And such analogies are by no means exaggerated: the exclusion zone around the station is just such a terrain.

However, over time, attitudes towards the Chernobyl nuclear power plant began to change. She and the adjacent territory have ceased to be perceived in the mass consciousness as a factor of unconditional and high risk to health and life. The crash site is becoming popular among tourists, especially foreigners, despite the rather high cost of excursions. In 2018, for example, 70 thousand people visited it, and in 2019 about 150 thousand travelers are expected. Interest in the exclusion zone around the nuclear power plant was fueled by the mini-series Chernobyl, released in 2019, filmed in the genre of a historical drama by the American TV channel HBO and the British television network Sky and took first place in the MDB rating, beating the leader of the last few years - the famous “ Game of Thrones ".

Meanwhile, the Chernobyl zone as a tourist destination is not developing so quickly. There are not too many tour operators organizing excursions here due to the fact that the guides need to undergo special training. You can get directly into the exclusion zone only through special checkpoints with limited bandwidth, which creates additional inconveniences, although such obstacles can hardly stop travel lovers and connoisseurs of everything new, mysterious and unexplored. On the positive side, it should be noted that the routes are still gradually expanding, many previously closed sections become available, some of them can be reached by water - by kayaking. In the future, it is planned to open additional checkpoints.

The history of the construction of a nuclear power plant

In the former Soviet Union, nuclear power was perceived as the power of the future. It was believed that the "peaceful atom" in the distant future will completely replace thermal and hydroelectric power plants. Based on this doctrine, the government of the USSR in June 1966 approved a plan for the phased commissioning of nuclear power plants. One of these nuclear power plants was to be the Chernobyl nuclear power plant - the first on the territory of the Ukrainian SSR.

The decision that the station will be located exactly where it is now was not taken immediately. Before that, in 1965-1966, specialists from the All-Union Design Institute "Teploelektroproekt" were looking for a suitable site, examining a total of 16 sites in Kiev, Vinnytsia and Zhytomyr regions. Ultimately, we settled on the right bank of the Pripyat River, a tributary of the Dnieper, on a site located 4 km from the village of Kopachi and 15 km from the Chernobyl regional center in the Kiev region, this is not far from the Yanov station of the Chernigov - Ovruch single-track railway line. Lands in this area were considered unproductive for management Agriculture... The study also showed that the site was compliant with water supply, traffic regulations and sanitary protection zone standards.

The construction of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant started in 1970. According to the project, its generated capacity was 6,000 MW. The first power unit was launched in 1974, the second in 1975. In 1981, the third power unit was commissioned, and two years later, the fourth and last, which will become the "gravedigger" of the entire facility and the surrounding area. But then hardly anyone could have foreseen such a development of events, so the first 100 billion kW / h of electricity generated by the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in August 1984 was perceived as a great achievement. Together with the Kursk and Lenin nuclear power plants, in a short time it became one of the three most powerful in the Land of Soviets. In 1986, its total capacity has already reached 4000 MW.

The new facility, all the more so dynamically developing and promising, required the participation of significant human resources, therefore, simultaneously with the construction of the station, the construction of Pripyat, one of the youngest cities in the Soviet Union, was underway. Moreover, they are young and from the point of view of its inhabitants, whose average age was only 27 years. Engineers and scientists from all over the vast country came here for permanent residence together with their families, where they were given apartments with all the amenities - before the accident, 47.5 thousand people already lived here. Many even compared Pripyat to Baikonur, since it was considered as prestigious to live and work here as in the satellite city of the cosmodrome of the same name. It, distinguished by its modern infrastructure, was called the city of power engineers, the city of the future, and also "atomic city". On May 1, 1986, the grand opening of the city amusement park was planned, but a terrible disaster put an end to these plans. As in the future of the whole city ...

Crash September 9, 1982

Over the entire period of its existence, the Chernobyl nuclear power plant has experienced two accidents. The first is about her the general public practically nothing is known - it took place on September 9, 1982. The day before, during the test run of the reactor of the first power unit, scheduled repairs were carried out. But something went wrong, and the fuel assembly collapsed. An emergency explosion of technological channel No. 62-44 took place, deforming the graphite stack of the core. As a result, a significant amount of radioactive substances were released into the reactor space. This accident would not have had such consequences if the emergency protection had been triggered, and if within 20 minutes after the rupture of the channel, which is a very long time, the reactor plant would not have been kept at a power of 700 MW.

The accident also affected the reactor space of the second power unit, into which about 800 kg of water was thrown out. The latter, evaporating, provoked a sharp increase in pressure, as a result of which the hydraulic locks were squeezed out, and the steam-gas mixture from the reactor space rushed under the bell of the wet gas holder. Then, mixing with the radioactive vapor-gas mixture from the reactor space of the first power unit, it burst out through the emptied hydraulic seal of Unit 2 into the ventilation pipe, and from there into the atmosphere. Radioactive substances have contaminated a fairly large area. To eliminate the consequences of this accident, it took about three months of repair and restoration work. However, they did not return to life channel 62-44. The section of the active zone adjacent to it was permanently taken out of work.

After the incident, the designers developed and implemented measures to prevent such situations, but four years later the following happened at the Chernobyl NPP. large-scale disaster, in comparison with which the first accident may seem like a minor incident with minor consequences.

Accident on April 26, 1986

On that terrible night, nothing foreshadowed trouble. The station was operating in a normal mode, at the fourth power unit the specialists carried out a design test of the turbine generator No. 8. And suddenly, unexpectedly, at about 1:24, an explosion occurred. It turned out to be so strong that it completely destroyed the reactor. A partial collapse befell the power unit building and the roof of the turbine hall. The explosion provoked the emergence of more than three dozen fires in the premises and on the roof, which were completely eliminated by 5 am. Brigades of the military unit, Pripyat and Kiev firefighters worked at the scene of the accident. Through joint efforts, it was possible to localize the fire and prevent it from spreading to other power units.

In addition, in the very first hours of the accident, the equipment of the fourth power unit was turned off and the neighboring third one was completely stopped. However, on the evening of April 26, a strong fire broke out in the central hall of the fourth power unit. Due to the fact that a severe radiation situation arose as a result of the explosion of the reactor and the combustion was of great intensity, helicopter technology was used to eliminate it, since from the very beginning it was clear that it would not be possible to do with regular means.

In the first days after the disaster, the liquidators worked at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant without the necessary means of protection and, having received an incompatible dose of radioactive exposure, soon died. The so-called active stage of the accident lasted 10 days, during which extremely intense releases of radioactive elements occurred. Among them are isotopes of uranium, plutonium, as well as cesium-134 and cesium-135, the half-life of which is, respectively, 2 years and 30 years, strontium-190 (its half-life is 29 years), iodine-131 (half-life is one of the shortest - 8 days). In the early days, the hot jet over the destroyed reactor rushed to a height of more than a kilometer, later decreasing to several hundred meters.

When the Chernobyl disaster occurred, the country's leadership at first did not realize the real scale of what had happened. According to the editor-in-chief of Echo of Moscow, Alexei Venediktov, ex-president of the USSR Mikhail Gorbachev recalled in private conversations with him that the special services first reported to him about the fire at the station and only then more complete information began to arrive. However, they hid it from ordinary citizens, explaining this by the need to avoid panic among the population. So, on April 28, a TASS report was circulated, which spoke of an "accident" at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.

While foreign journalists were sounding the alarm, talking about the threat to human life, about the radioactive cloud heading towards Europe, traditional May parades were held in Kiev and other cities of Ukraine and Belarus. Kievans walked along Khreshchatyk and October Revolution Square (today - Independence Square), smart, with flowers, with red flags and banners, not even realizing that at that time the level of radiation exceeded the background level by several dozen times.

The tragedy was witnessed by many residents of Pripyat, who watched the explosion at the reactor from the windows of their apartments, but they were not immediately informed about what exactly happened and what the scale of the accident was. All day on April 26, people calmly walked the streets, inhaling the already contaminated air. The evacuation of the population of "atomic city" began only the next day. Residents were forbidden to take pets, things, toys with them, while - again, for reasons of avoiding panic - they gave a false hope that they would be able to return to their homes in three days. But this did not happen either 30 days, or 300, or 33 years after the accident ...

The Soviet government hid details about the accident for two weeks. With an official appeal to the citizens of the country about what happened Secretary General The CPSU Central Committee Mikhail Gorbachev appeared on television only on May 14th. “This is the first time we actually encountered such a formidable force as nuclear energy, out of control,” he said, acknowledging the extraordinary and dangerous nature of what happened at the station. Subsequently, after the collapse of the USSR, Mikhail Sergeevich said in one of his interviews: "Chernobyl made me a different person."

Meanwhile, while the authorities kept silent, the radiation that escaped to freedom did its dirty deed. After the explosion, the wind blowing from the southeast drove the radioactive cloud in the direction of the Scandinavian Peninsula. After flying over Sweden, Finland and Norway, it returned back to Ukraine. The change in wind direction to the west changed the trajectory of the infected cloud, and it, having sailed through Poland and Czechoslovakia, hung over Austria. In the Alps, it cleared itself and again headed for Poland. It is possible to enumerate for a long time which countries were "visited" by the deadly radiation from Chernobyl. Perhaps there is no place on Earth over which the radioactive cloud formed by the explosion did not leave its mark.

But the most affected, of course, were Ukraine and Belarus, not to mention the area directly adjacent to the nuclear power plant. The first victim of the "peaceful atom" was the senior inspector of the main circulation pump of the fourth power unit Valeriy Khodimchuk, who died in the explosion. The second employee was seriously injured, from which he died the next morning. On April 27, 104 injured were taken to Moscow, to hospital No. 6. Another 134 employees, as well as members of firefighters and rescue teams, fell ill with radiation sickness, of which 28 people died in the next few months.

According to the World Health Organization, the total number of people who died as a result of the accident, or may die in the future is 4 thousand people. Of this number, a total of 50 emergency workers died from acute radiation sickness and 9 children died from radiation-induced thyroid cancer. Another 3,940 people, according to WHO estimates, may die from cancer and leukemia caused by radiation damage to the body.

But there are even more dire numbers. In total, 600 thousand people from all over Soviet Union... Of these, 60 thousand died, 165 thousand became disabled.

Three decades after the accident, the question remains topical: what caused it? There are different versions. According to one of them, the exploded reactor initially did not meet safety standards and had weaknesses in the design. Possible reasons are also cited as incomplete operating procedures, insufficient qualifications of personnel and their negligent attitude towards protection systems during testing. But which of them is the truth, or at least as close as possible to it, it is difficult to say. It is possible that there was a combination of all these factors.

Chernobyl nuclear power plant after the accident

The power of the explosion at the fourth power unit of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant was equivalent to the explosions of 80 atomic bombs dropped by the United States on the Japanese Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. Accidents at the Chernobyl station on the International scale of nuclear events were assigned the seventh - the maximum! - the level of danger. The release of radioactive elements amounted to about 50 million curies, which is 400-500 times higher than the levels of Hiroshima contamination after the bombing. They infected about 200 thousand km² of land. The lion's share of this huge area, about 70%, falls on Ukraine, Belarus and Russia.

To prevent the further spread of radiation, the reactor destroyed by the explosion at the end of 1986 was covered with a special engineering structure known as the Shelter Object. It is also called the "sarcophagus". There are no other structures similar to it in the world. This sad symbol of the Chernobyl disaster was erected on the basis of the latest construction research, which had not been used until that moment. It was erected in conditions of radiation, which carried a direct threat to the health and life of the builders. In addition, the Shelter, which was projected from May 20 to August 20, 1986, is the largest remote-sensing structure in the world.

The actual installation of the "sarcophagus" took place from June to November of the same year. The facility was erected around the clock, on a watch basis. Up to 10 thousand people were sometimes involved in one shift. The builders removed and moved 90 thousand m³ of soil, collected over 7 tons of metal structures, laid about 400 thousand m³ of concrete, and all this in five months.

The accelerated pace of work could not but affect their quality. Technologies were not followed to the end and not in everything. For example, part of the support beams simply lay on the ruins of the destroyed reactor, and part of the roof was covered large diameter pipes that are not even secured. Over the years, the old sarcophagus began to deteriorate, and it became necessary to cover it with a new one. The construction of the latter began in 2007. The object was named "New Safe Confinement" (NSC) or simply "arch", as it is an insulating arch structure. It was originally planned to complete it in 2012-2013, but due to insufficient funding, these terms were postponed by several years. At the end of November 2016, the NSC was pushed onto the reactor building, and it was finally put into operation only on July 10, 2019. Due to its height of 100 m, width of 257 m and length of 165 m, "Arka" has become the largest movable ground structure.

As for the Chernobyl nuclear power plant as a whole, it was decided to close it. The timing of the decommissioning of power units was approved by the Supreme Council and the Council of Ministers of the Ukrainian SSR on February 17, 1990. After a fire broke out on October 11, 1991 at the second power unit, the leadership of the Ukrainian SSR ordered to stop it immediately. Two years later, it was planned to close the first and third power units, but the government of Ukraine proposed to continue the operation of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. However, under pressure from the world community, the final decision to decommission the station was still made.

Since December 2000, in preparation for the shutdown, the capacity of the station has been gradually decreasing. On December 15, a teleconference between the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and the Ukraine National Palace was organized, during which President Leonid Kuchma gave an order to permanently stop the work of the station. And right there, on the air, the emergency protection key was turned on the reactor of the third power unit, and the Chernobyl NPP stopped generating electricity. This happened at 13:17.

Meanwhile, the process of decommissioning the station cannot be considered complete. According to the approved schedule, this should happen in 2064. Until this date, the reactors will be in a mothballed state until their radioactivity decreases.

Chernobyl zone as a tourist destination

The so-called Chernobyl tourism is becoming more and more popular and it is completely safe. If we compare the exclusion zone in the first years after the accident and now, then the difference is obvious. Nature begins to actively awaken, rare species of plants and animals appear. Although, and no one hides this, in the Chernobyl nuclear power plant zone to this day there are places with a significantly increased and potentially deadly level of radiation.

This is due to the fact that radiation does not spread evenly, but settles on the contaminated area in "islands". So, at first glance, a paradoxical situation turns out when the radiation background directly near the station does not exceed 300 microroentgens per hour, and at a distance from it, even significant, it can be significantly higher. The most dangerous in this regard is the stele "ChNPP im. VI Lenin "- the level of radiation here at times reaches an extremely dangerous level of 1200 microroentgens per hour.

Travelers are not allowed on these "islands", choosing for them safe routes... Of course, while staying in the exclusion zone, a person receives additional radiation exposure by three types of ionizing radiation: alpha, beta and gamma. However, they cannot harm health.

In 2017, the 30-kilometer exclusion zone received official status as the Chernobyl Radiation-Ecological Biosphere Reserve, which is already called the No. 1 tourist site in Ukraine. This is a unique place where you can see wildlife like you will not see it anywhere else. It is home to wolves and deer, beavers and turtles, bears and wild horses. More than 50 thousand people visit this reserve every year, and the development of tourism contributes to the emergence of the local economy. True, fashionable hotels, entertainment centers, cafes, restaurants and souvenir shops are not here. The Chernobyl zone, although open to tourists, continues to be a protected military territory and a center for the distribution of electricity between neighboring Ukraine and Belarus.

Pripyat, a real ghost town, is of genuine interest among travel lovers. Nobody lives in it, but time has no power over its landscape and special atmosphere. After the accident at the station, the surrounding villages were buried in the ground with the help of excavators, but the "atomic city" did not stop its existence. A year after the disaster, residents were allowed to return briefly to take something from the property.

Like the entire exclusion zone, Pripyat is under the protection of the police and patrolmen, but constant watch did not save it from the intrigues of robbers and marauders. Perhaps, there is not a single apartment left that would not be entered by thieves who stole all the most valuable. The military plant "Jupiter", which operated until 1997, and the swimming pool "Lazurny", which closed a year later, were completely looted. At the moment, a pumping station continues to operate in the city, supplying the Chernobyl nuclear power plant with water, a laundry, its service personnel and garages for trucks.

A city tour will take you back to the 80s of the last century. Pripyat is a small piece of the Soviet Union of the era of developed socialism, not only in Ukraine, but in everything the former USSR... Graffiti of those years has been preserved on the walls of the houses. Everywhere there are portraits, posters and slogans associated with Lenin and the Communist Party, they can be seen in schools, kindergartens, the palace of culture, hospital, hotel, in the police station. Looking at all this, it is impossible to get rid of the impression that you have made a journey into the very seemingly serene past for which the bulk of the older generation is nostalgic. The only thing that returns to reality is the emptiness and the ominous silence around. In Pripyat, not only is it deserted - you won't even see birds in the sky.

For modern youth, an excursion to Pripyat is a unique opportunity to get a visual representation of the times of the Soviet Union. You don't need to be the owner of a rich imagination to imagine how prosperous this city of power engineers was, and what brilliant prospects awaited it, if this terrible catastrophe did not happen in April 1986. True, all buildings are of the same type, they were built of concrete, and in this regard, Pripyat was no different from other Soviet cities. Some houses are hidden under the crowns of overgrown trees and are barely visible, while others have collapsed either from time to time, or under the weight of a large amount of snow that fell on them.

How to legally get into the Chernobyl zone

Several Ukrainian operators are organizing tours to the 30-kilometer exclusion zone of the Chernobyl NPP, the largest of which is the Chernobyl Tour company. Buses with fans of "radiation rest" go there every day, especially since after the release of the series "Chernobyl" the demand for excursions to these ominous places has doubled. Some extreme tourists consider official excursions here too boring and turn to the services of illegal guides. The latter are ready to lead those wishing to secret paths and provide an overnight stay in some abandoned house in the best traditions of spy films. Of course, for the appropriate payment. But is it worth the risk, given that the exclusion zone is a protected object? For violation of the regime, punishment is provided in accordance with Ukrainian law.

Tourists who legally come to the abandoned city of Pripyat and the quite comfortable existing regional center of Chernobyl, where shift workers who serve the station live, are given individual dosimeters and taught to use them. Thus, people, as they say, kill two birds with one stone - and they will go on excursions, and they will gain basic knowledge of how to act in the event of a radiation disaster in order to survive.

A few days before the trip, the tourist must contact the operator who has an official permit to operate in the exclusion zone. Having left his passport details, he makes an advance payment. For citizens of Ukraine, a one-day excursion will cost at least $ 49, for citizens of foreign countries - $ 99 and more.

The personal data of a potential tourist are checked by the special services. If a person for some reason does not inspire confidence, he will be denied a visit to the Chernobyl exclusion zone. For those who are allowed, the tour operator will issue passes. When the group is formed, the day and place of gathering in Kiev is appointed, where the guide meets her and puts her on the bus. Travel time to ChEZ is one and a half hours. Then tourists enter the territory through the checkpoint.

Any event in the world consists of such a multitude of factors that one can safely say: the whole universe takes part in it in one way or another. The human ability to perceive and comprehend reality ... well, what can we say about it? It is possible that we have almost overtaken some plants in success in this area. As long as we just live, you can not pay much attention to what is really happening around you. Sounds of varying volume are heard on the street, more or less like cars are driving in different directions, something like a mosquito or the remnants of yesterday's hallucination flew past your nose, and an elephant is hurriedly brought around the corner, which you did not even notice.

Workers of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. 1984 year

But we are calm. We know there are Rules. The multiplication table, hygienic standards, Military regulations, the Criminal Code and Euclidean geometry - everything that helps us to believe in regularity, orderliness and, most importantly, predictability of what is happening. How it was with Lewis Carroll - "If you hold a red-hot poker in your hands for a very long time, then in the end you can get a little burned"?

Trouble begins when disasters occur. Whatever order they may be, they almost always remain inexplicable and defying comprehension. Why did this all-new left sandal fall off the sole while the right one is full of strength and health? Why, out of a thousand cars that drove through the frozen puddle that day, only one flew into the ditch? Why, on April 26, 1986, during a completely planned procedure at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, everything began to develop completely differently, as usual, not as described by the regulations and as common sense suggests? However, let's give the floor to a direct participant in the events.

What happened?

Anatoly Dyatlov

“On April 26, 1986, at one hour twenty three minutes and forty seconds, the shift supervisor of the ChNPP Unit 4, Alexander Akimov, ordered to shut down the reactor at the end of the work carried out before the power unit was shut down for planned repairs. The reactor operator Leonid Toptunov removed the cap from the AZ button, which protects against accidental mistaken pressing, and pressed the button. On this signal, 187 control rods of the reactor began to move downward into the core. The backlight lamps on the mnemonic panel lit up, and the arrows of the position indicators of the rods began to move. Alexander Akimov, standing half-turned to the reactor control panel, observed this, also saw that the "spots" of the AR imbalance indicators darted to the left, as it should be, which meant a decrease in the reactor power, turned to the safety panel, which he was observing during the experiment.

But then something happened that even the most unbridled fantasy could not predict. After a slight decrease, the reactor power suddenly began to increase at an ever-increasing rate, and alarm signals appeared. L. Toptunov shouted about an emergency increase in power. But he could not do anything. All he could do was hold down the AZ button, the control rods went into the core. He has no other means at his disposal. And all the others too. A. Akimov shouted sharply: "Turn off the reactor!" I jumped to the control panel and cut off the power to the electromagnetic clutches of the CPS rod drives. The action is correct but useless. After all, the CPS logic, that is, all its elements of the logical circuits, worked correctly, the rods went into the zone. Now it is clear: after pressing the AZ button, there were no correct actions, there were no means of rescue ... With a short interval, two powerful explosions followed. The AZ rods stopped moving, not even halfway. They had nowhere else to go. At one hour twenty-three minutes forty-seven seconds, the reactor collapsed by the acceleration of power on prompt neutrons. This is a collapse, the ultimate catastrophe that can happen at a power reactor. They did not comprehend it, they did not prepare for it. "

This is an excerpt from the book by Anatoly Dyatlov “Chernobyl. How it was". The author is the deputy chief engineer of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant for operation, who was present that day at the fourth unit, who became one of the liquidators, was recognized as one of the culprits of the tragedy and was sentenced to ten years in prison, from where he was released two years later to die from radiation, where he and managed to write his memoirs before he died in 1995.

If someone taught physics very badly at school and has a vague idea of ​​what is happening inside the reactor, he probably did not understand what is described above. In principle, it can be conventionally explained in this way.

Let's imagine that we have tea in our glass, which is trying to boil non-stop by itself. Well, such is the tea. To prevent him from blowing the glass to smithereens and filling the kitchen with hot steam, we regularly dip metal spoons into the glass to cool it down. The colder we need the tea, the more spoons we shove. And vice versa: to make the tea hotter, we take out the spoons. Of course, carbide-boron and graphite rods, which are placed in the reactor, work according to a slightly different principle, but the essence of this does not change too much.

Now let's remember what is the main problem facing all power plants in the world. The most trouble for power engineers is not with fuel prices, not with drinking electricians and not with crowds of “greens” picketing their checkpoints. The biggest nuisance in the life of any power engineer is the uneven power consumption by the station's clients. The unpleasant habit of humanity to work during the day, sleep at night, and even wash, shave and watch TV shows in unison, leads to the fact that the generated and consumed energy, instead of pouring out in a smooth, uniform stream, is forced to gallop like an enraged goat, which causes blackouts and other troubles. After all, instability in the operation of any system leads to failures, and getting rid of excess energy is harder than producing it. Especially great difficulties with this are at nuclear power plants, since it is quite difficult to explain a chain reaction when it should go more actively, and when it is possible to slow down.

Engineers at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. 1980 year

In the early eighties, the USSR began to slowly explore the possibility of rapidly increasing and decreasing the power of the reactors. This method of controlling energy loads was, in theory, much simpler and more profitable than all others.

This program, of course, was not discussed openly, the personnel of the stations could only guess why these "planned repairs" became so frequent and the regulations for working with reactors changed. But, on the other hand, they didn’t do anything so extraordinarily vile with the reactors. And if this world were regulated only by the laws of physics and logic, then the fourth power unit would still behave like an angel and regularly serve the peaceful atom.

For until now, no one has been able to really answer the main question of the Chernobyl disaster: why did the reactor power not fall that time after the introduction of the rods, but, on the contrary, inexplicably rose sharply?

The two most authoritative bodies - the USSR Gosatomnadzor Commission and a special committee of the IAEA, after several years of work, produced documents, each of which is stuffed with facts about how the accident proceeded, but not a single page in these detailed studies can find an answer to the question "why?" There you can find wishes, regrets, fears, indications of shortcomings and forecasts for the future, but there is no clear explanation for what happened. By and large, both of these reports could be reduced to the phrase “Someone boomed there” *.

* Note by Phacochoerus "a Funtika: « No, well, this is slander! The IAEA staff were nevertheless more cultured. In fact, they wrote: “It is not known for certain how the power surge began, which led to the destruction of the reactor of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. »

Less official researchers, on the contrary, put forward their versions with might and main - one more beautiful and convincing than the other. And if there weren't so many of them, some of them would probably be worth believing.

Various institutes, organizations and simply world-famous scientists in turn declared the culprits of the incident:

incorrect design of the rods; incorrect design of the reactor itself;
a mistake made by personnel for too long reducing the power of the reactor; a local unnoticed earthquake that occurred exactly near the Chernobyl nuclear power plant; ball lightning; a particle still unknown to science, which sometimes occurs in a chain reaction.

The alphabet is not enough to list all the authoritative versions (unauthorized ones, of course, as always, look more beautiful and contain such wonderful things as evil Martians, cunning tsereushniki and angry Jehovah. It is a pity that such a respected scientific publication as MAXIM cannot go to about the low tastes of the crowd and with gusto describe all this in more detail.

These strange methods of dealing with radiation

The list of items that are usually required to distribute to the public in the event of a radiation hazard seems incomplete to the uninitiated. And where is the button accordion, the boa and the butterfly net? But in reality, the things on this list are not so useless.

Mask Someone seriously thinks that gamma rays, instantly piercing steel, will fail in front of five layers of gauze? Gamma rays are not. But the radioactive dust, on which the heaviest, but no less dangerous substances have already settled, will enter the respiratory tract less intensively.

Iodine The isotope of iodine - one of the most short-lived elements of a radioactive release - has the unpleasant property of settling in the thyroid gland for a long time and rendering it completely unusable. It is recommended to take iodine tablets so that your thyroid gland of this iodine is heaped up and it no longer grabs it from the air. True, an overdose of iodine is a dangerous thing in itself, so it is not recommended to swallow it in bubbles.

Canned food Milk and vegetables would be the healthiest foods in contact with radiation, but alas, they are the first to become infected. And then comes meat, which ate vegetables and gave milk. So it is better not to collect pasture in the infected region. Especially mushrooms: they contain a concentration of radioactive chemical elements uppermost.

Liquidation

Recording of conversations between dispatchers of rescue services immediately after the disaster:

The explosion itself claimed the lives of two people: one died immediately, the second was taken to the hospital. Firefighters were the first to arrive at the scene of the disaster and set to work - extinguishing the fire. They extinguished it in canvas robes and helmets. They did not have any other means of protection, and they did not know about the radiation threat - only a couple of hours later, information began to spread that this fire was somewhat different from the usual one.

By morning, firefighters extinguished the flame and began to faint - radiation damage began to affect. 136 employees and rescuers who were at the station that day received a huge dose of radiation, and one in four died in the first months after the accident.

In the next three years, a total of about half a million people were involved in the elimination of the consequences of the explosion (almost half of them were conscripts, many of whom were actually sent to Chernobyl by force). The very place of the disaster was covered with a mixture of lead, boron and dolomite, after which a concrete sarcophagus was erected over the reactor. Nevertheless, the amount of radioactive substances released into the air immediately after the accident and in the first weeks after it was enormous. Neither before nor after did such a number of them find themselves in densely populated areas.

The deafness of the USSR authorities about the accident did not seem so strange then as it is now. It was so in the practice of that time to hide bad or disturbing news from the population that even information about a sexual maniac operating in the area could not reach the ears of a serene public for years; and only when the next "Fisher" or "Mosgaz" started counting dozens, if not hundreds, of their victims, the district police officers were given the task of quietly informing parents and teachers of the fact that it would be better for children not to run alone on the street yet.

Therefore, the city of Pripyat the next day after the accident was evacuated hastily, but quietly. People were told that they were taken out for a day, for a maximum of two, and asked not to take any things with them, so as not to overload the transport. The authorities did not drop a word about radiation.

Rumors, of course, spread, but the overwhelming majority of the inhabitants of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia had never heard of any Chernobyl. Some of the members of the Central Committee of the CPSU had the conscience to raise the issue of canceling May Day demonstrations, at least in cities located directly in the path of polluted clouds, but it was believed that such a violation of the eternal order would cause unhealthy unrest in society. So the residents of Kiev, Minsk and other cities had time to run around with balls and carnations under the radioactive rain.

But a radioactive release of this magnitude was impossible to hide. The first to raise the cry were the Poles and Scandinavians, to whom those magic clouds flew from the east and brought with them a lot of interesting things.

Victims

Indirect evidence confirming that scientists gave the government the go-ahead to remain silent about Chernobyl may be the fact that scientist Valery Legasov, a member of the government commission to investigate the accident, who organized the liquidation for four months and voiced the official (very smoothed) version of what was happening to the foreign press, in 1988 He hanged himself for a year, leaving a dictaphone record in his office telling about the details of the accident, and that part of the record, which chronologically should have contained a story about the authorities' reaction to the events in the first days, was erased by unidentified persons.

Another indirect evidence of this is that scientists still radiate optimism. And now the officials of the Federal Atomic Energy Agency stand on the fact that only the few hundred people who took part in the liquidation in the first days of the explosion, and even then with bills, can be considered to be really victims of the explosion. For example, the article "Who helped create the Chernobyl myth", written by experts from the FAAE and IBRAE RAN in 2005, analyzes statistics on the health status of residents of contaminated areas and, recognizing that the general population is sick there a little more often, sees the reason only in the fact that, succumbing to alarmist moods, people, firstly, run to doctors with every acne, and secondly, for many years they have been living in unhealthy stress caused by hysteria in the tabloids. They explain the huge number of disabled people among the liquidators of the first wave by the fact that “being disabled is beneficial” and hint that the main cause of catastrophic mortality among liquidators is not the consequences of radiation, but alcoholism caused by the same irrational fear of radiation. Even the phrase "radiation hazard" our peaceful atomic lobbyists write exclusively in quotation marks.

But this is one side of the coin. For every nuclear scientist who is convinced that so far there is no cleaner and safer energy in the world than atomic, there is a member of an environmental or human rights organization who is ready to sow that very panic with generous handfuls.

Greenpeace, for example, estimates the number of victims of the Chernobyl accident at 10 million, adding to them, however, representatives of the next generations who will get sick or be born sick within the next 50 years.

Between these two poles there are tens and hundreds of international organizations, whose statistical studies contradict each other so much that in 2003 the IAEA was forced to create the organization "Chernobyl Forum", whose task would be to analyze these statistics in order to create at least some reliable picture happening.

And so far, nothing is clear about the estimates of the consequences of the disaster. The increase in the mortality rate of the population from areas close to Chernobyl can be explained by the mass migration of young people from there. A slight "rejuvenation" of oncological diseases is due to the fact that local residents are tested for oncology much more intensively than in other places, so many cases of cancer are caught at very early stages. Even the condition of burdocks and ladybirds in the closed area around Chernobyl is the subject of fierce controversy. It seems like burdocks grow on marvelous, and the cows are well-fed, and the number of mutations in the local flora and fauna is within the natural norm. But how the harmlessness of radiation is manifested here, and what is the beneficial effect of the absence of people for many kilometers around, it is difficult to answer.

It was the first nuclear power plant on the territory of the Ukrainian SSR, its location is north of Kiev, 11 km from the border with Belarus, in the Pripyat River valley. The eponymous city of Pripyat was located 3 km west of the nuclear power plant zone, and 18 km east of the station - the regional center, the city of Chernobyl. Both of these cities are currently abandoned (popularly called "ghost towns"). The first block of the nuclear power plant was put into operation on September 27, 1977.

Chronology of events

The employees of the Chernobyl NPP were preparing for the shutdown of the fourth power unit for scheduled repairs and for conducting research to remove additional energy during the operation of the main nuclear reactor. Due to dispatch restrictions, the shutdown of the nuclear reactor was postponed several times, which led to difficulties in controlling the reactor's power.
13:00-13:05
The power of the reactor began to decrease (from 3200 megawatts to 1600), turbine No. 7 was shut down, and the power supply of the electrical systems was transferred to turbine No. 8.
14:00
The emergency shutdown system of the reactor was blocked, and the dispatcher gave an order to delay the shutdown of Unit 4. The reactor itself was operating at half power (1600 megawatts).
23:10
It was allowed to start reducing the reactor power (up to 500 megawatts).

0:38
The reactor power dropped to 30 megawatts, the xenon "poisoning" of the reactor began (the reactor, due to the accumulation of the xenon isotope, acquired negative reactivity and could not reach high power). Instead of shutting down the reactor (as prescribed by the instructions), the NPP employee removed the absorbing rods from the core.
1:00
The power of the reactor was only raised to 200 megawatts due to the growing xenon poisoning.
01:03-01:07
The seventh and eighth pumps were connected to the six main circulating pumps, but the work of so many pumps provoked a failure in the system due to lack of water.
01:19
Due to the lowering of the water level, the station operator increased the supply of condensate (feed water). In addition, in violation of the instructions, the reactor shutdown systems were blocked by signals of insufficient water level and steam pressure. The last manual control rods were removed from the core, which made it possible to manually control the processes taking place in the reactor.

01:22-01:23
The water level has stabilized. The station staff received a printout of the reactor's parameters, which showed that the reactivity margin was dangerously small (which, again, according to the instructions, meant that the reactor needed to be shut down). The NPP personnel decided that it was possible to continue working with the reactor and conduct research. At the same time, the thermal power began to increase.
01:23
It was decided to press the emergency shutdown button of the A3-5 reactor. At the signal of this button, emergency protection rods were to be introduced into the core, but they could not be lowered to the end - the steam pressure in the reactor held them at a height of 2 meters (the height of the reactor was 7 meters). The thermal power continued to grow (up to 530 megawatts), the self-acceleration of the reactor began, as a result, at 01:23:44, the power jumped 100 times. The pressure in the core of Unit 4 increased many times over, it forced the water back into the pipelines. An explosion occurred. It became impossible to control the reactor. According to some reports, another explosion occurred at 01:23:46. The walls and ceilings of the turbine hall were destroyed, and fires appeared. Employees started to leave their jobs.

01:24
The reactor core partially collapsed, fission fragments left the zone.
02:10-02:30
The fires on the roof of the turbine hall and the reactor compartment of the station were suppressed.

By 5 o'clock the fire was completely extinguished.

At 8:00 In the evening, a fire broke out again in power unit No. 4, already of greater intensity, helicopters were involved in extinguishing.