The following is an exerpt from Chernobyl: The Ongoing Story of the World's Deadliest Nuclear Disaster, by Glenn Alan Cheney (Macmillan, New York, 1993) 128 pp. ISBN 0-02-718305-X. Copyright: 1993 Glenn Cheney.
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Chernobyl:
The Ongoing Story of the World's Deadliest Nuclear Disaster
by
Glenn Alan Cheney
Introduction
The explosion that destroyed Number Four reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant was the biggest accident in history. It rendered an area the size of New York State unsafe for human habitation. It left a city of 42,000 people abandoned for the next five hundred years. It killed 31 people almost immediately. Within the next few years, the Soviet government admitted the deaths of 224 others. The actual toll, however, is probably several thousand. In the next few years, the number may reach the tens of thousands. Lingering radiation is causing uncountable thousands of people to suffer an immune deficiency syndrome and mysterious new forms of disease. Among a population of millions, it contributes to a death rate that now exceeds the birth rate.
Ironically, despite the size of the accident, no one knows exactly what happened or why or who's to blame or how many have died or who is still suffering or whether a similar accident, or several, might happen again. Explanations are as varied as the motivations behind them. Governments are blaming each other for cover-ups and incompetence. Mothers accuse governments of murder. Former Soviet bureaucrats accuse mothers of hysteria. Scientists contradict each other. Doctors try to link radiation, pollution and malnutrition to explain a syndrome similar to AIDS. Measurements of radiation seem to depend on who does the measuring. Some environmentalists claim to have identified biological damage on the other side of the globe. The United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency, on the other hand, has declared the world free of aftereffects. The United Nations World Health Organization, however, has found soaring rates of cancer in the Chernobyl area.
Some historians suggest that the accident was the final blow to the empire of the Soviet Union. The largest country in the world, the Soviet Union, was already staggering under economic collapse, corruption, incompetence, political paranoia, and unwieldy bureaucracy. All these forces came into focus at Chernobyl on April 26, 1986. A poorly designed reactor built to substandard specifications was manned by incompetent technicians and allowed to operate without any of its emergency protection systems. Then, after the explosion, bureaucratic, political, and economical considerations caused the truth to be hidden, exposing millions to needlessly high doses of radiation.
The Soviet leader at that time, Mikhail Gorbachev, apparently recognized that the accident had resulted from and symbolized all that was ill with his country. For the first time in Soviet history, the government admitted to a major failure. To the surprise of the world, Gorbachev began to take corrective action. Critics of the Soviet system were allowed to speak out without fear of punishment. Scientists were allowed to share data with Western countries, the Soviet Union's former enemies. The Communist party relinquished its total control of the government.
The Soviet empire could not hold up against the truth and freedom. One by one, the Soviet republics declared their independence from the central government in Moscow. In December of 1991, five and a half years after the accident, the independent states joined in a loosely defined "sovereignty." The Chernobyl power plant then fell under the authority of a new country called Ukraine.
Only now is some of the truth being brought to light. Nuclear technicians are revealing what really happened on the day of the explosion. Families are speaking out about the deadly neglect they suffered in the aftermath. The 600,000 workers who tried to clean up the radioactive mess have formed a union and are discovering how many of them have died or are dying. Doctors are gathering statistics that show a startling and horrifying deterioration of health in Ukraine and Byelorus. Journalists are investigating the situation. New political leaders are exposing, and sometimes exaggerating, official evidence of what really happened.
Chernobyl is not old news. The world has seen only the beginning of the tragedy. The death toll is still rising. The diseases are growing worse. While no one has a viable plan for cleaning up the ruins of the reactor, radioactive fuel is slowly leaking into the ground and sky. There still exists the possibility of the remaining fuel reaching critical mass and exploding in an atomic chain reaction. Most horrifying of all, 40 other reactors of the Chernobyl type are still operating in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet states. In 25 other countries, 426 atomic power plants continue to operate.
It is important to understand the causes and consequences of Chernobyl. The causes show us some of what was wrong with the Soviet Union. The consequences show us the potential danger of working with nuclear power.
Chapter Two
An Accident Waiting to Happen
The nuclear reactors at Chernobyl - four were operating in 1986 - are of a type known as RBMK, a Russian acronym meaning Large Power Boiling Reactor. The RBMK generates electricity by heating water. The water turns to steam which, expanding under pressure, forces the blades of a turbine to turn. Each reactor powers two turbines.
The heat comes from an atomic chain reaction. Neutrons thrown off from radioactive elements in this case the uranium fuel - smash into similar atoms nearby. These atoms break up, releasing energy and more neutrons. These neutrons go onto to break up more atoms and release more energy. It happens very quickly, and the release of energy is far more than that of mere fire. A pound of uranium-235 can produce the heat energy of 1,500 tons of coal. The Number Four reactor at Chernobyl was loaded with 185 tons of uranium-235.
The core of the RBMK reactor, a cylinder 46 feet (14m) in diameter and 23 feet (7 m) tall, consists of stacks of nuclear fuel assemblies packed within columns of graphite. Each column also has a channel into which a control rod can be lowered. The rods, made of boron carbide, absorb the free neutrons that shoot out from decaying uranium fuel. The more control rods in place, the fewer the electrons continuing the chain reaction. If all 211 control rods are in place, the reactor stops reacting. If none or not enough are in place, the reactor is not unlike a very large atomic bomb.
The explosion at Chernobyl, however, was not an atomic explosion. It was a steam explosion followed, probably, by a chemical explosion. It happened during
an experiment.
The operators of the plant wanted to see what would happen during a blackout. The plant ran on electricity tapped off the national power grid. It needed this electricity to power everything from the light bulbs to the motors that raised and lowered the control rods. If the plant failed to receive the electric power , it would have to be shut down immediately. If it wasn't, and if the auxiliary diesel generators failed to supply enough power to the plant, electric water pumps would not be able to circulate the water needed to cool the core. The core would quickly heat to its own melting point. Becoming a white-hot miniature sun, it would destroy the structure around it as it burned its way through the floor and into the earth, the famous "China Syndrome." But it wouldn't literally burn its way through to the other side of the earth. As soon as it hit the underground water table, it would explode in a monstrous burst of superheated steam.
The problem with stopping the nuclear reaction during a blackout would be that the plant needed electricity to perform its shut-down procedures.
Theoretically the spinning turbines could continue to generate electric power under their own inertia as they gradually slowed. But would the power last long enough to lower the control rods, cool the reactor, and take the other complex steps necessary to stop the reactor? There was only one way to find out.
Who Was (and Wasn't) in Charge?
The director of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, V.P. Bryukhanov, was not a specialist in nuclear energy. His specialty was turbines. His experience and training were in a coal-fired power plant. Likewise, his chief engineer, Nikolai Fomin, came directly from a conventional power plant to Chernobyl. Anatoly Dyatlov, deputy chief engineer of Reactors 3 and 4 , had some experience with small nuclear reactors but had not dealt with the intricacies of a large reactor.
Soviet regulations required nuclear plant directors to request permission to perform tests and experiments. Theoretically the plan would be analyzed and approved by the Gidroproyekt ("Hydroproject") Institute, which oversaw the design of the plant, Soyuzatomenergo ("Atomic Energy Agency"), the Ministry of Energy department responsible for plant personnel and activities, and the Nuclear Safety Committee, which had authority to shut down nuclear power facilities if they failed to meet safety standards. . Unfortunately, Gidroproyekt and Soyuzatomenergo were headed by directors who had never been trained in nuclear physics or the complexities of nuclear power plants.
In January, 1986, Bryukhanov submitted his request and plan. When he failed to receive an answer, he thought nothing of it. That was the way the Soviet bureaucracy worked. Bureaucrats, protective of their jobs and fearful of excessive punishment if they did something wrong, figured the safest thing to do was to do nothing. The best decision was no decision. A good bureaucrat followed orders and volunteered nothing extra.
The bureaucrats may also have been unaware that nuclear accidents could take place. When accidents occurred - frighteningly often - they were kept secret. The plant designers at Gidroproyekt would not know what someone at Soyuzatomenergo knew about a weakness in the system. The Nuclear Safety Committee would not inform all plant engineers about accidents at other plants. Unless an engineer or operator witnessed an accident first hand, he or she would assume that the safety systems worked perfectly.
So neither director Bryukhanov nor chief engineer Fomin were surprised when the central government agencies did not reply to their request to perform an experiment. Confident in their safety systems, they decided to go ahead with their plan.
Safety Second
In retrospect, the Chernobyl power plant was doomed to disaster. It was poorly designed, poorly constructed, and poorly managed by poorly trained engineers.
The poor construction of the plant was not a secret at the time of the accident. Just a month earlier, a lengthy newspaper article published in Pripyat, the nearby city built for the Chernobyl workers, cited several construction flaws. Years later, a release of KGB documents revealed that the government knew of many flaws and problems. Some of the flaws resulted from the government's rush to bring the plant on-line. When the builders encountered a problem, they often went ahead with construction, however shoddy. Key parts that had to be perfectly level were off by as much as three degrees. When suppliers failed to deliver enough cement, builders simply added more sand. Many metal components were defective. For the radioactive waste depository, builders installed 326 tones of defective steel sheathing and 220 tons of defective pillars to hold it up.
As it happened, these flaws made no difference in the performance of the Number Four reactor. It blew up before they could cause an accident. The fear today throughout the former Soviet Union is that dozens of other reactors were built with the same shoddy craftsmanship.
As if the substandard construction were not enough to doom the reactor, the design of the plant allowed operators to switch off all safety systems.
All nuclear reactors have several built-in emergency protection systems. When something goes wrong - a blackout, an earthquake, the failure of a water pump, an excessive temperature, an escape of radioactivity - the systems automatically take corrective action. They may switch to an alternate source of electricity or water coolant. They may reduce the rate of atomic reaction. They may shut down the reactor altogether.
The RBMK reactor at Chernobyl had several main safety systems. When an emergency was detected, an emergency power reduction system would go into action. All 211 graphite control rods would lower into the fuel assembly columns. Emergency diesel generators would start up to provide auxiliary power. Auxiliary water pumps would switch on to increase the flow of water to the reactor. The emergency core cooling system (ECCS) would feed in more water via a different route. Yet another emergency supply of water would flow in from a pressurized tank.
Most other types of reactors have similar (and additional) emergency systems, but most are designed so that they cannot be shut off. Furthermore, they are connected to a single "design-failure" button. If, in the event of a failure in the designed structure of the facility, this button is tripped, all safety systems into action. Under no circumstances could all the systems, and especially the design-failure button, be shut off or bypassed.
In the RBMK reactor system, it was possible to disconnect all the safety systems. On top of that, the design-failure button, which had been installed just two weeks before the accident, operated through the back-up diesel generators. If the generators were not operating, the button was useless. Even if the button was working, an operator would have to hold it down for up to a minute, preventing him or her from taking other action elsewhere during the emergency.
The test conducted on April 26, 1986, was to see if the turbines could produce electricity if the reactor was no longer powering them. In a similar test conducted earlier, the turbines continued to turn long enough, but they did not supply sufficient power to shut the reactor down. In that experiment, however, not all safety systems were disconnected.
Chernobyl director Bryukhanov and chief engineer Fomin wanted to conduct a "pure" experiment. "Pure" meant simulating emergency conditions as much as possible. Since the simulated blackout was an emergency situation, the diesel generators had to be disconnected. Otherwise they would automatically begin replacing the electricity that was no longer arriving from the outside power grid.
The plan also called for the disconnection of the emergency power reduction system. The justi
fication was that if the reactor overheated, emergency water would automatically feed in to cool it. The result, however, might be like that of a taking crockery from a hot oven and plunging it into cold water. The thermal shock would damage or even destroy the reactor. Apparently the engineers assumed they could cool the reactor in other ways. They seemed to think an overheated nuclear reactor was no more serious than an overheated coal-fired boiler, that it could just be switched off and cooled down.
All of this was part of the technical plan submitted to the authorities in Moscow. Presumably, a plan calling for the operation of a nuclear power plant without any safety systems would have been disapproved rather than approved. For some mysterious reason, however, the bureaucracy did neither, and the experiment went ahead as planned.
The Explosion
The test was originally scheduled for April 25. At 1:00 p.m. on that day, Anatoly Dyatlov, deputy engineer for Reactors Three and Four, ordered the reduction of power at Reactor Four. Normally it operated at 3,000 megawatts (MW) of thermal power. When the power level reached 1,600 megawatts, Turbogenerator Number Seven (one of two powered by Reactor Four) was switched off. It no longer fed into the general power grid that supplied Ukraine and other areas with electricity. Turbogenerator Number Eight, the center of the forthcoming experiment, continued to run off the reactor power and to supply the grid and the reactor complex with electricity.
At 2:00 p.m., as scheduled, engineers disconnected the emergency core cooling system. Though part of the plan, this action was a clear violation of all national and international safety rules.
Moments later, an electrical dispatcher in Kiev requested that the test be postponed until after midnight. The demand for electricity would be lower then. The engineers at Chernobyl agreed to wait. The reactor continued to run at 50 percent power - about 1,500 MW - and to turn turbogenerator Number Eight.
At 11:00 that night, operators resumed the programmed power reduction. The test was to begin when the power level stabilized between 700 and 1,000 MW.
Seven hundred megawatts was the minimum power level permitted in an RBMK reactor. Above that level, the reactor achieves a natural balance between two opposing forces. The presence of cooling water in the core tends to slow the rate of reaction, or reactivity. As the water changes to steam, the reactivity increases. The higher the reactivity, the higher the heat. The higher the heat, the more steam produced, which in turn further raises reactivity.
An opposing force counterbalances this self-feeding cycle. Reactivity decreases as the nuclear fuel becomes hotter. The reduced reactivity lowers the temperature which in turn reduces the amount of steam produced, which therefore increases the amount of cooling water which therefore further reduces the reactivity.
As long as the reactor runs at over 700 MW, these forces tend to balance each other. Below that level, however, the reactor becomes unstable and hard to control. A system called a Local Automatic Control is designed to either maintain that level or shut the reactor down. To prevent a shutdown during the experiment, the Local Automatic Control was disconnected.
Without the automatic control, the operators were unable to maintain the proper power level. It fell to 30 MW. The low reactivity caused the fuel to produce abnormally high levels of iodine isotopes. These isotopes began to contaminate the fuel, making it very difficult to increase power again. The engineers were faced with the choice of shutting down the reactor or raising the power level. If they shut down the reactor, they would not be able to perform their test on Turbogenerator Number Eight. Since the reactor was due to be shut down for routine maintenance, they would have to wait a full year before they could try again.
On duty at the time were senior reactor control engineer Leonid Toptunov, and shift foreman Aleksandre Akimov. Deputy chief engineer Dyatlov ordered Toptunov and Akimov to pull out more control rods and raise the power level high enough to perform the test on Turbogenerator Number Eight.
At first, Toptunov refused. Regulations required at least 28 control rods in place. He knew the danger of removing more. But he also knew the consequences of disobeying an order. A young man - he was only 26 - he did not dare stand up to his superior. He followed the order, pulling out control rods one by one, gradually "burning off" some of the iodine-131 and other isotopes that result from nuclear reaction. Power gradually increased, and the reactor stabilized at 200 MW.
But with only 18 rods now lowered into the core, the reactor was highly unstable. Shutting it down would be extremely difficult. Nonetheless, in defiance of the facility's own safety rules, the emergency core cooling system was left disconnected, and operators proceeded to prepare the reactor system for the test.
At 1:03 a.m., operators started two additional pumps and increased the flow of water to the reactor. The purpose was to keep the reactor cool as Turbogenerator Number Eight wound down. But this increased the flow of water through the core, which resulted in a lowering of steam production, which resulted in lower power production. Operators compensated by pulling out even more control rods. Meanwhile, the lack of steam in other parts of the system forced the operator to increase the flow of water, which put too much pressure on the pumps.
The reactor could not have been a more precarious situation. Power was unstable and at a level far below the permissible. The nuclear fuel was still contaminated by iodine and other isotopes. The number of control rods in the core was far below the permissible. Waters pumps were running beyond their capacity. The reactor trigger connected to the turbogenerators was neutralized. The trigger linked to water level (which was too high) and steam pressure (which was too low) were neutralized, as was the trigger linked to heat levels. The emergency core cooling system was turned off. And the whole thing was built so poorly that it hardly needed the help of incompetent engineers to self-destruct.
Nonetheless, at 1:23 a.m., the reactor seemed stable enough for the test to begin. Under orders of director Bryukhanov, operators turned off the turbogenerator trigger because it would have shut down the reactor as soon as the generators were turned off. This was the safety system that probably could have prevented the accident that was about to happen.
At 1:23:04 a.m., the steam that turned Turbogenerator Number Eight was blocked. Within thirty seconds, the turbine began to wind down, electric power dropped, water pumps slowed, the water supply to the core decreased, and more steam developed. More steam resulted in even less liquid water at the core, which resulted in higher reactivity. The higher reactivity produced more steam. As the system fed itself, heat production soared. At 1:23:40, operators, recognizing an emergency, hit the button that was to lower all control rods into the core and shut down the reactor.
It was probably too late to save the reactor. Ironically, however, this last attempt was the final straw. The reactor system had a design problem that no one had foreseen. The control rods had six-inch hollow tips at their lead ends. These tips enter the core before the boron carbide section. As they enter the core, they displace water. For a few seconds, they actually cause power to increase. Under normal operating conditions, this small and temporary increase has little effect.
But Chernobyl Reactor Number Four was not operating under normal conditions. As the control rod tips entered the core, power surged to 100 times normal in four seconds. Under intense heat, the core began to break down. Fuel assemblies fragmented, control rod channels warped, steam built up ferociously and, finally,
steam tubes burst. Tons of steam and water shot into the reactor, causing a tremendous steam explosion. The lid over the reactor, a thousand-ton concrete disk ten feet thick, flipped into the air like a nickel and came back down to rest in an almost vertical position. Air rushed in, hit the white hot core and raging neutrons, and set off at least one chemical explosion.
Between the two (and possibly more) explosions, the roof over the reactor was destroyed. Hundreds of tons of nuclear fuel, graphite and pieces of the reactor were hurled into the air. Most fell back into the reactor or within a radius of a few kilometers. Several tons of smaller particles, however, rose in a mile-high pillar of laser-red heat to begin a deadly voyage around the world.
Chapter Four
The Liquidators
By 3:00 a.m. on April 26, Chernobyl director Bryukhanov informed his superiors in Moscow that there had been an explosion at Reactor Block 4. He gave them a relatively optimistic report. Radiation measurements, he said, showed levels within tolerable limits. This was true, in a certain sense, because the equipment they had was incapable of measuring levels any higher than that those expected under normal conditions. The only adequate equipment was locked in a steel cabinet in the burning building.
Bryukhanov also reported that the reactor was intact. By his reasoning, it had to be intact because, as everyone knew, the reactor was perfectly safe. Bryukhanov reported that cooling water was being fed to the reactor. Apparently he believed this was true because the appropriate valve had been opened. When, at 9:00, an engineer climbed up to the roof of the building, peered in at the wreckage and reported what he saw - a white-hot glare in a pile of rubble and billowing smoke, Bryukhanov refused to believe it.
Chiefs, directors and engineers from agencies involved in atomic energy boarded a jet to Kiev and from there took a helicopter to Chernobyl. By noon they were hovering 650 feet over the plant. Gazing into the gaping wound of pipes, girders and rubble in the central hall, they saw the lid of the reactor, cherry-red with heat, tilted up like the damper of a flue. Abandoned tangles of fire hose hung into the crater. A black circle of graphite lay a hundred yards around the plant. Though they had no radiometric equipment, it was clear they were looking at a very serious problem. They were also gaining a nice tan as the radiation seared their faces.
The cauldron below was brewing up every element and isotope in the periodic chart. As uncountable billions of neutrons shot around in chaos, they smashed into atoms, breaking them up and sending off more neutrons. Some isotopes existed for nanoseconds. Others boiled out into the sky to live for tens of thousands of years. Many of the elements and molecules, such as lead, were deadly for their chemical properties, let alone their radioactivity.
Communist Party leaders in Pripyat reported the town still calm. Teams were practicing for the May Day games. Several weddings were taking place. Fearing panic more than radiation, the leaders began to discuss the pros and cons and possibilities of evacuation. A roadblock was set up to prevent anyone from entering or leaving the town.
Firemen, unaware of that they were fighting an unquenchable atomic fire, assaulted the roof and aimed hoses into the flaming crater. They peered over the edge into the deadly abyss. Within seconds they absorbed enough radiation to kill them. They assumed that their violent nausea and overwhelming fatigue were caused by the smoke of burning chemicals. They assumed the toasted brown of their skin was from thermal heat.
The fire itself was no ordinary fire. At first, it was mostly burning tar on the roof. At some point, however, the thousand tons of graphite from the core ignited. Graphite is often used in industry because withstands temperatures in excess of 2,500 degrees centigrade. Once it starts burning, however, it is very hard to extinguish. Water turns to steam before it reaches the flames. If there happens to be a white-hot core of melted nuclear fuel nearby, the steam decomposes into hydrogen and oxygen. As the hydrogen rises away the heat, it ignites. In effect, the firemen were literally killing themselves to feed the fire.
The local defense militia was called in. Young soldiers were given gauze masks and cloth jumpsuits. And estimated 3,400 were assigned to clean nuclear fuel and graphite from the roof. They had no idea that they would be running through an environment of 10,000 to 20,000 rad per hour. They were allowed ninety seconds there, enough time to grab a chunk of something and toss it into the crater. After that minute-and-a-half shift, they could retire on a disability pension and take home a cash bonus to ease the consequences.
The world had never coped with such a disaster. No one had any idea what to do. The logical thing was to bury the fire and the tons of radionuclides that remained in the ruins of the reactor. The air force sent a fleet of helicopters. One by one they landed on the bank of the Pripyat River. Nuclear engineers, physicists and deputy ministers shoveled sand into bags as if doing penance in hell. Later they were helped by a hundred local farmers who had volunteered without knowing the kind of fire they were supposed to put out. Eventually someone thought of spreading out parachutes, filling them with sand and having the helicopters lift them by their cords.
Helicopter pilots had to fly low so the sand bombs wouldn't stir up so much radioactive material or punch through the floor of the reactor. They also dropped loads of boron, to absorb neutrons, lead, to shield the radiation, and dolomite, which would break down into carbon dioxide and help smother the flames.
The pilots and crews received radiation at a rate of several hundred rad per hour. Crew members had to lean out the doors into the upward flood of radionuclides to see when to release the loads. In a single flight they would take in several years of allowable dosage. They flew until they were too weak and nauseated to hold the controls of their helicopters.
There was fear that the collapsing rubble of nuclear fuel would become too concentrated. If it did, it could reach critical mass and set off a true atomic explosion, destroying the neighboring three reactors. Blocks One, Two and Three were shut down. Block Three was in immediate danger of burning, so its nuclear fuel had to be carried to safe areas some distance away. Workers piled lead capsules of nuclear fuel on platforms with handles and ran just as fast as their legs could carry them.
The First Victims
Number Six Clinic in Moscow didn't quite know what to do with the sudden influx of radioactive patients. The first bunch had to wait outside. Still dressed in the summer clothes they'd been wearing in Ukraine, they shivered in the cold Moscow air while patients with more normal ailments were admitted ahead of them. The delay was to allow staff to set up equipment that had been stored in case of nuclear war. The doctors who finally came to escort them were wearing protective gear. They installed each patient in a bed under a plastic tent and examined wounds by reaching through holes in the tent.
No other patients shared that floor of the hospital. Later, when radiation was detected on floors above and below the Chernobyl victims, other patients were moved still further away. Doctors requested extra pay for working under hazardous conditions.
The victims suffered from radiation and heat burns. Their skin was browned like toasted marshmallow. In some places it was black like burnt marshmallow. Their skin cracked, blistered, peeled, hung in strips. The slightest movement could cause it to tear open. The wounds did not heal. Their hair fell out. Muscles separated from bones like over-cooked meat. Iodine-131 had col
lected in their thyroids. Strontium-90 had collected in their bones. Cesium and plutonium had spread through their bodies. The patients themselves were toxic waste. Victims who arrived later and lay in those beds became more radioactive than they had been when they arrived..
* * *
Boris Stolyarchuk, the senior control engineer on duty at the time of the explosion, was among the first victims taken to Number Six Clinic. He was still alive in 1992 though suffering from cardiovascular and digestive track problems. He reports more attention from KGB agents than from doctors. They started in Pripyat and continued at Number Six Clinic, sending agent after agent to hear his testimony again and again. The interrogations continued while he was shaking from fear and vomiting uncontrollably. He saw himself possibly dying of radiation poisoning, and possibly being imprisoned for blowing up a nuclear power plant. He wasn't sure which fate he preferred.
For a week, he wasn't sure whether he had caused the accident. He told the agents exactly what he did and what he remembered happening. He told them he had followed his instructions perfectly.
And indeed he had. That, says Stolyarchuk, was the source of his fear. The detailed plan for the test of Turbogenerator Eight had virtually doomed the reactor. The responsible authorities, he says now, were hoping to blame the disaster on human error somewhere below them. But he couldn't say that to the KGB, which was forcing him to walk the terrifying edge between accused criminal and witness for the prosecution.
As Stolyarchuk lay in bed in Number Six Clinic, he kept asking what had become of his colleagues. One, he knew, was still inside the Chernobyl plant, his body surrounded by radiation that would kill anyone who went near. He had run to open a water valve near the core, a desperate attempt to cool a reactor that no longer existed.
No one would answer Stolyarchuk's questions. The fate of his colleagues was none of his business, they said. His business was to tell them the truth about what happened just before the explosion. The truth they wanted, of course, was their version of the truth, not his.
The guards in the hall and the women who washed radiation from the floors had news. They could be bribed with cigarettes. They reported death after death. In the first few weeks, twenty-six people died. Six were firemen, twenty were engineers and operators at the plant. Their radioactive bodies were taken to a cemetery called Mitino, just outside of Moscow. Boris Stolyarchuk knew most of the dead and assumed he would soon join them.
Mitino was a new cemetery. In the next few years it would be used exclusively for thousands of liquidators - those who helped clean up the radioactive mess. They were given their own cemetery to isolate their strontium-infected bones from the rest of the world. The first victims, the firemen, are buried in lead-lined coffins soldered shut, preventing their radioactive remains from joining the dust of the earth. The size of the Mitino cemetery is one of few clues to the number of deaths caused by the accident at Chernobyl. While the Soviet government denied more than 254 deaths, the cemetery kept growing.
Stolyarchuk's health wavered for the next two months. He was transferred to a sanitarium outside Leningrad. His explanations held up through repeated interrogations. When he was released in Kiev, he was given fifty roubles - worth just a few dollars - and two nights in a hotel. Then he had to go find himself some clothes and a place to live. Everything he owned was back in Pripyat, untouchable for the next several centuries. He stayed with friends for several months until the government gave him a room in a boarding house. Later, he married another liquidator. They had a daughter. To their relief, she was born normal, though like most children in Kiev she is often sick with ailments doctors can't quite identify. In 1991, he finally received a letter from the Soviet government. It said the accident wasn't his fault.
Dousing the Atomic Fire
By May 1, the pile of sand, boron and lead seemed to have done the trick. The flames died. Smoke dwindled to a wisp. Radioactive emissions subsided. Though still watching clouds of radionuclides settle over Europe and rise into the jet stream, the world felt relieved to see the disaster diminish after only four days. The Soviet Union reported only two dead and 197 hospitalized. It seemed the disaster wasn't nearly as bad as it might have been.
But on May 3, the level of radioactive emission started rising again. Firemen discovered they were dealing with a kind of fire that doesn't go out when smothered. It just gets worse. The burial of the core only trapped the heat, which caused an increase in reactivity. Internal temperatures shot up to over 2,000 degrees Centigrade. There was talk of the possibility of the concentrated nuclear materials reaching critical mass and exploding like an atomic bomb.
A more probable event was the melting of the floor beneath the reactor. This was all the more likely because of the 4,000 tons of materials that had been thrown on top of the core. If the whole white-hot mess fell into the suppression pool below the reactor, the water there would instantly vaporize and explode, throwing the remainder of the fuel and tons of radioactive steam into the atmosphere.
No one had ever made plans for such a situation. No one knew with certainty what to do. Except for nuclear war, this was probably the biggest emergency mankind could possibly devise. Solutions, however, had to be dreamed up on the spot, under pressure and without possibility of experiment.
The best solution seemed to be to first drain the water from the suppression pool, then inject liquid nitrogen around the bottom of the core. The nitrogen would cool the core, lower reactivity, and replace the air that could cause a flare-up. To drain the suppression pool, however, workers had to enter the reactor building, climb through radioactive rubble, find the drain valve and open it. The workers who did so almost certainly absorbed a deadly dose of radiation. As with most of the 600,00 liquidators, information on their fate is not available.
To feed in the nitrogen was even more dangerous. To open a way for a pipeline, military workers shot armor-piercing shells at the wall. The hole was too small, however. Next they blasted a hole in the wall, but they found that rubble of concrete, broken pipe and other materials blocked the way. The next best plan was to send welders into the building to cut a hole through a certain corridor wall. A team of courageous workers went in and did the job, but it probably cost them their lives.
The Sarcophagus
The fire was not considered out until May 6. It had taken ten days, and the situation was still far from under control. It could only be said that it wasn't getting worse. The release of radiation had slowed considerably, but by pre-Chernobyl standards it was still disastrously high. Until the end of May, the daily release was more than the total release at Three Mile Island. Leakage would continue until October.
The next stage of recovery was to build a "sarcophagus" around the radioactive ruins and clean up some of the radioactive mess that lay around it. The Soviets hoped to use robotic bulldozers to do some of this. Even before the fire was out, remote-control machines were set on the roof, but they turned out to be useless. One got tangled up in the fire hoses. Another lost its electronic circuitry to the barrage of radiation. In the end, humans had to clean up the mess they'd made. People called the workers "biological robots."
No protective gear was efficient enough to withstand the high levels of radiation. Most workers were given only cloth jumpsuits, rubber boots, and respirators that filtered out only a little of the radioactive dust. Bulldozers wer
e equipped with lead cabins, and buses to the site had lead plates hung over the windows. Many of the workers had no idea what danger they faced. They saw no threat and felt no pain. They were quite content to be receiving double salaries and extra rations of vodka, which supposedly would make their bodies less susceptible to radiation.
The job was gargantuan. A structure of steel plates had to be welded over the entire building. Over 400,000 cubic meters of concrete had to be mixed at the site and poured into concrete barriers which were moved into place by bulldozers. New pavement had to be laid down all around the plant. Miners, many of them workers who had built the subway system in Kiev, were all but forced to tunnel under the plant to build concrete supports beneath the core. They also had to build a wall 45 feet into the ground to prevent contaminated rainwater from mixing with ground water. All this work was done under radioactive conditions far in excess of those allowed by law.
Helicopters sprayed a plastic film over exposed soil to catch and hold radionuclides. Eventually, bulldozers scraped up several inches of topsoil from hundreds of acres. Other farmland was simply plowed under to put the radionuclides under a few inches of soil. Dikes had to be built to keep rainwater from washing radionuclides into the Pripyat River and from there to the Dnieper, which flowed through Kiev and into the Black Sea. Abandoned pets in Pripyat, many of which were soon blind and too weak to walk, had to be hunted down, shot and buried along with contaminated cars, tools and wastes.
Contaminated farm animals were rounded up and moved from the area. While they were fattened up for slaughter, their manure was radioactive enough to be treated as hazardous waste. To dilute the exposure of people who consumed the 10,000 tons of meat from these animals, much of it was ground up and mixed with uncontaminated meat at a ratio of one to ten. Many workers in meat-packing plants reported feeling ill when working with the meat. Some undiluted meat was shipped to the far corners of the Soviet Union so that no one individual would eat enough to accumulate a dangerous dose. Secret government documents made public in 1991 revealed that 47.5 tons of meat and 2 million tons of milk were produced in contaminated areas.
Since trees and other plants tend to suck up radioactive water and hold the isotopes in their cells, and since radioactive dust tends to settle on leaves, vast areas of forest were completely leveled. Since burning the wood would have sent the isotopes back into the atmosphere, the wood had to be buried. As far away as Kiev, leaves fallen from trees had to be raked up and buried. Citizens remember school children being ordered to gather the radioactive leaves in their arms and carry them into trucks.
In all, over 600,000 liquidators worked on the clean up. This number includes anyone who entered the "Prohibited Zone" that reaches 30 km. around the plant. It is estimated that about 200,000 received high doses. Years later, as the government offered liquidators special health and retirement benefits, not to mention an official medal featuring a drop of blood and symbols for alpha, beta and gamma. But many liquidators complain that the men who were sent on suicide missions onto the roof or into the building were receiving the same benefits as those who merely drove a bus into fringes of the Zone.
During the clean-up, civilian workers were expected to stay at the site for twelve hours, then spend twelve hours away. They were not supposed to receive more than the allowable lifetime dose of 35 rad. Doctors, however, have unofficially reported many people arriving in clinics after exposure to 200 rad or more. Only a few workers wore personal dosimeter badges, and these could be read only at a special laboratory. Workers turned in their badges only after a day's work, by which time they may have received more than the allowable lifetime dose. Official records tend to show great numbers with the maximum allowed dose - no more, no less.
Soldiers, many from the military reserve, suffered even greater exposure. Some stayed in the Zone through the summer and into November. They slept in tents a few miles from the site, exposed to the radioactive breeze. Most worked with no protective clothing and had no shower facilities where they could wash the radionuclides from their bodies. Without protective clothing or respirators, they patrolled within a few yards of the reactor. No one explained the danger they were in.
No one knows what became of many of those 600,000 liquidators. Most of the soldiers were later transferred to points throughout the Soviet Union. If any collective records were kept of their fate, they are still secret. No complete records are available on civilian liquidators. The Ukrainian Ministry of Health says it has a registry of 129,000 liquidators, including dose estimates for 56,000 people who received 10 to 20 rem. The Soviet government claimed to have records for 37,500 liquidators hospitalized between 1986 and 1988. The accuracy and quality of dose and medical estimations, however, are suspected to be inadequate, and there has been little cooperation between Soviet and Ukrainian agencies. No statistical information on liquidators as a whole is available to the public.
Only in 1991 did liquidators begin to seek each other out and hope to find something closer to the truth. Liquidators in Ukraine formed an association, called The Chernobyl Union. For the first time they, not a government, began collecting statistics about how many liquidators have died of cancer, brain hemorrhage, blood disease and other diseases possibly related to exposure to radiation.
As the Soviet Union broke up into several independent states in late 1991, it became all the more difficult to gather information. So far various individuals and organizations are only estimating how many have died. Estimates range from 3,000 to 10,000, though officials in Moscow were still claiming the number of deaths is under 300, and the former Ukrainian Minister of Health, Anotoly Romanenko, who became Director of the Ukrainian Institute of Radiology, still maintained that the only health problem was stress and that the only cure was to stop worrying about it.
Chapter Five
An Unhealthy Environment
The biggest and most important controversy in the wake of the Chernobyl disaster concerns the long-term health. How has radiation affected the health of people who lived nearby, or hundreds of miles away, or on the other side of the world? The answers, muddled by conflicting motivations, may never be known.
The number of estimated deaths ranges between incredible extremes. As of the end of 1991, the Soviet government in Moscow admitted to 254 deaths due to acute radiation sickness (ARS). The Chernobyl Union claims that as many as 10,000 workers have already died from a number of illnesses. Statistics of death rates in the United States indicate the possibility of thousands of "extra" deaths in the months following the accident. Some cancer specialists are predicting an eventual total of several million cancer cases and as many as half a million deaths from cancer throughout Europe, Asia and the Middle East. Other specialists say the worldwide increase will be under 1,000 over the next 50 years - a total far below that caused by medical X-rays or radon.
Just as uncertain are the less dreadful effects of Chernobyl's radiation on the human body. Acute Radiation Sickness is easy to diagnose and hard to deny. Other possible effects, however, are harder to link to a specific cause. In contaminated areas in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia, Chernobyl is being blamed for everything cancer and birth defects to bloody noses and sore throats. These and other illnesses that may be caused by radiation may also be caused by other factors. Malnutrition, exposure to chemical pollut
ion, and mental stress can lead to similar ill effects.
The confusion and controversy is a product of conflicting fears, purposes and unknown factors. Science, having never studied such a situation, doesn't even claim to have the definite answers. Politicians, more certain of themselves, either want to minimize or exaggerate the truth, depending, apparently, on their personal motivations. The atomic energy industry is being accused of hiding or distorting the truth. Bureaucrats may be burying or even destroying information to protect themselves from blame. Mothers of sick children are either perceiving what scientists cannot observe or are making accusations in blind and desperate hysteria. Doctors are frustrated by lack of reliable statistics as well as reliable tools for diagnoses. Together, this mix of motives and lack of data produces results that are more confusing than conclusive.
Information Deficiency
It is often impossible to link cancer to a specific cause. The tumor that starts to grow in a middle-aged adult could have been caused by contact with a carcinogen during childhood. Since virtually every human being comes into contact with some amount of cigarette smoke, pesticides, fertilizers, steroids, X-rays, natural and manmade radiation, lead vapors, food additives, and other suspected carcinogens, it is hard to determine which have caused people to develop cancer.
To discover the probable causes of cancer, oncologists need to use statistical information. To establish the link between cigarettes and lung cancer, for example, they analyzed lifestyle data from thousands of lung cancer victims. They then compared the data with that of control groups with similar habits and lifestyles but no traces of cancer. While the cancer group and control group had similar rates of exposure to other possible causes, the cancer group had a higher rate of cigarette use.
For this kind of research, scientists need a lot of accurate and carefully selected information. Unfortunately, such information is very scarce in the former Soviet republics. Before glasnost, Soviet people had virtually no freedom to record and exchange information. The Soviet government had the power to tell doctors and scientists how to record health data. Even before the Chernobyl incident, information was falsely recorded or later manipulated to hide health problems. Apparently cancer rates were already high because of radiation and chemical pollution. Soviet statistics, however, showed a relatively low cancer rate.
Immediately after the Chernobyl incident, despite the new policy of glasnost, doctors were ordered not to diagnose or record any illness as a possible consequences of radiation. If they did so, they could lose their jobs and even go to prison. Children with thyroid problems were listed as having strep throat. Pneumonia was diagnosed as bronchitis.
Statistics are further confused by special medical efforts made after the accident. After 1988, all people in areas affected by Chernobyl were required to see a doctor once a year. With more people seeing doctors more often, more health problems were detected. The apparent increase in disease, therefore, is, to some indeterminable extent, only an increase in the detection of disease.
No statistical records - at least none available to the public - were kept for liquidators. Those in the army were often transferred to other areas of the Soviet Union, effectively disappearing. Their whereabouts and current state of health are not known. The medical records of some 67,000 radiation exposures in Ukraine were apparently stolen and destroyed. Many of the extant records were most certainly falsified. Since regulations prohibited any individual from receiving more than 35 rad, most records show no more than that. Many of the helicopter pilots and firemen, however, certainly received hundreds of rad.
Meanwhile, the Soviet Union has ceased to exist. The new national governments, especially those of Ukraine and Belarus, are very interested in determining how their populations are suffering from radiation. Unfortunately, the Russian government, apparently hoping to avoid responsibility for the accident and the expense of compensating victims, may not be offering as much information, or as accurate information, as it has. It is impossible to say, with any clinical accuracy, how much the incidence of cancer, asthma, pneumonia, tuberculosis, diphtheria, birth defects, anemia, cardiovascular disease, immune deficiency, and gastrointestinal problems has increased. Doctors have no doubt, however, that all of these diseases are much more common that in the past.
The Forecast: Worsening Health
The effects of long-term low-dose radiation take years to develop. To predict increases in cancer and other health problems, scientists have been using data collected from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the only prior incident that involved thousands of people. The experience of atomic bomb survivors from those cities indicates that cancer rates will rise, though not much above normal levels. Increases in leukemia and thyroid cancer in those cities came only after about ten years.
The effects of those two atomic bombings, however, are likely to be quite different from those of Chernobyl. The source, type and amount of radiation were different. (The Hiroshima bomb used only 4.5 tons of fuel, while Chernobyl released 50 tons.) Since the bombings happened during a war, the population was predominantly female, elderly and very young. Food came into the city from non-radioactive sources. Also, those who survived the initial bombing, fire and widespread disease tended to be of stronger constitution than the average population and therefore were less likely to die of cancer in later years.
So far, it looks like the populations around Chernobyl are going to suffer long-term problems far worse than those in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The cancer cases expected ten years in the future were developing just five years after the accident. A Ukrainian epidemiologist working in Belarus found cancer had increased 45 percent between 1985 and 1990 in "dirty" areas, but only 11 percent in less radioactive areas. By 1991, cases of thyroid cancer in children were increasing very quickly. This ailment was virtually unknown before Chernobyl. Doctors do not remember diagnosing more than one case per year in a given region. By 1991, there were 38 cases in the heavily contaminated Gomel region of Belarus, and 131 in six regions around Minsk, the capital of Belarus. Incidence of goiters, a non-cancerous enlargement of the thyroid in "dirty" areas of Belarus increased 1,500 percent but merely doubled in cleaner (though by no means uncontaminated) areas. Scientists from the World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed the data.
A similar situation was developing in Ukraine. In 1983, there were three cases of thyroid cancer. In 1984, just one. There were two per year from 1985 to 1987. In 1989, however, there were six, and in 1990, 21. All of them had lived in Zone 1, the most contaminated areas. Some were still fetuses when Chernobyl exploded.
Still, doctors are hesitant to claim a scientific link between Chernobyl's iodine-131 and the cases of cancer. To firmly establish the connection, they need to know how much iodine-131 the average child, and the patients, received or when or whether they were given doses of iodine to fill the thyroid before radioactive iodine could enter. Since that iodine-131 has such a short half-life, it had to be measured within 80 days of exposure. (In cases where it was measured immediately after the accident, some children's thyroids were emitting 300 millirads per hour - more than the annual dose allowed in the United States.) By the time cancer and other thyroid problems develop , the possible cause has disappeared.
Increases in other forms of cancer began to appear in the early 1990s, a few years sooner than expected. Again, data is scattered and not readi
ly attributed to radiation. In a Belarusan town fifty miles north of Chernobyl, the frequency of malignant tumors increased from 210 cases per 100,000 people in 1986 to 337 cases in 1990.
At the Children's Hematology Center in Minsk, doctors report a doubling of leukemia rates since 1986, though the rates before that cannot be confirmed. Some of the increase may be the result of increased monitoring of public health. In Ukraine, leukemia rates were stable in the 1980s but seemed to be increasingly slightly in the early 1990s. Doctors still lacked statistical evidence of increased rates but expected to see more cases after 1993.
Leonid V. Skripka, an elected representative in the municipal government of Kiev, a former plant biologist, gathered information from several hospitals in Kiev and also from the Academy of Science where he once worked. Some of his information came from the KGB, the Soviet Union's secretive information agency, which was dissolved in Ukraine when it won its independence. He said official records listed 30,000 victims of Chernobyl, but there were probably another 20,000 who hadn't bothered to register.
Personally, however, Skripka considers all 2.6 million people in Kiev to be victims because radiation levels were and still are higher than officially recognized. Secret KGB data indicated radioactive elements in virtually all residents. Shortly after the accident, one-year-old children had an average of .5 rem of iodine in their thyroids. Pregnant women were found to have radioactive particles in their blood. Nursing mothers had it in their milk. Blood donor data in 1990 showed that 80 percent of the population had abnormal blood, especially in immunological proteins. Because of this, 30 percent of children in Kiev could not receive a vaccine without contracting the very disease the vaccine was meant to prevent.
According to Skripka's data, the death rate among officially registered victims of Chernobyl rose 400 percent from 1987 to 1991. Cancer rates were up 300 percent and expected to climb sharply. Half of deaths from gastrointestinal cancers were from internal radiation. Breast cancer was up 26 percent but could not be linked to radiation because there was no way to measure how much radiation the women had consumed. Generally, cases of all disease had increased 500 percent. Respiratory disease, not including cancer and tuberculosis, was up 2,000 percent. Pneumonia rose 220 percent in adults and 260 percent in children. Cancer of the brain rose 350 percent. Genetic aberrations in heavily contaminated areas (not Kiev) had risen over 1,000 percent.
Experiments with animals - mostly white rats - are producing no good news for the future. Rats receiving food with low doses of radiation tend to develop cancer within nine months, while those receiving clean food develop cancer much less often and only after 16 months. Scientists are not sure how to evaluate the data, however, because the rats received very carefully balanced diets, while people in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine do not.
The director of the Kiev morgue says that he was never asked to try to link radiation to patterns in causes of death. Shortly after the accident, a few specific cadavers were identified as those of liquidators, and the morgue was directed to remove certain organs and send them to the Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology. He was never told why or what came of subsequent tests.
In subsequent years, morgue personnel detected two startling facts. The "sudden death" rate - that is, death occurring to people not under the care of a doctor - among relatively young adults had increased from about 4,000 per year in 1987 to about 6,000 in 1991. Heart diseases, including heart attacks and blood diseases, were the biggest killer. (The same is true of heart disease in the general population of the United States.) There is no single explanation for these deaths, though Chernobyl seems an likely culprit.
The morgue director suspected that alcoholism was a significant factor. Many liquidators drank too much because they were on disability and had nothing else to do. Others drank in the erroneous hope that it would alleviate the effects of radiation. Others drank in despair over their health and the general future of their country. Also, many of the deaths may have fallen into the "Sudden" category because of various reasons people did not go to doctors: no effective care, fear of hearing their illness was terminal, or resignation that radiation made an early death inevitable.
The second startling fact that the director noticed was a soaring rate of brain hemorrhage among men under the age of thirty. This virtually never happened before Chernobyl. Now it was common. Thinner blood vessels - a known result of exposure to radiation, though also of malnutrition and alcoholism - was the immediate cause of hemorrhage.
Meanwhile, at the other end of the range of human life, a hospital in Kiev reported that only half of babies were born without health problems. The birth rate had declined dramatically, but the number of premature babies was remaining constant. As of 1991, the number of birth defects among babies born of mothers not from highly contaminated areas, however, had not risen. The biggest problem, said doctors, was a lack of supplies and equipment. Disposable diapers were not available. There was no equipment to warm premature babies, measure blood pressure or regulate intravenous solutions. Hypodermic needles were used so often they had to be resharpened. Infections were especially high because adult patients were interned nearby.
Overall, the rate of death in Ukraine now exceeds the rate of birth by about 40,000 per year. A biologist in Kiev summed up the situation rather succinctly. She said that Ukrainians could be considered an endangered species. If the current trend continued long enough, they would be extinct.
Chernobyl AIDS
Virtually every doctor in Ukraine and Belarus has noticed a strange thing happening in public health. Simply put, people are getting sick more often, and their sicknesses are worse than they used to be. Allergies are more common and more serious. Pregnant women suffer more complications and earlier in the pregnancy, and more women die during childbirth. Pulmonary problems, from asthma to cancer, have increased tremendously. Simple illnesses such as colds and flu are worse and last longer. Surgical operations are riskier and more difficult because the body has trouble recovering from surgical wounds and minor infections. People report vague dizziness and temporary blackouts and loss of consciousness.
The problem is affecting children most of all. Only 35 percent of school children in Kiev are free of health problems. Twenty-five percent of children evacuated from Pripyat have weakened heart muscles. Such common childhood diseases as measles and chicken pox take much longer to cure. Nose bleeds are far more common than in the past. Minor wounds take longer to heal. Stomach aches are almost constant. Children come home from school so fatigued they can hardly walk.
A most disturbing fact is that people's bodies do not respond to medication as they should. A medicine meant to bring down blood pressure, for example, might touch off a fever. Medication meant to reduce anemia might increase it. Complex diseases such as leukemia are extremely difficult to treat.
One doctor at a pediatric hospital expressed the problem well. He said that every case of illness, and its treatment, is unique. Measles in one child is different from that in another. The information in textbooks is not valid. The treatments developed after years of experiments with laboratory animals are no longer valid. Doctors must practice what they call "catastrophe medicine," offering untried treatments and waiting to see how the patient responds. In effect, the patient is an experimental animal, though without the benefits that such animals normally receive: a sterile environment, a
balanced diet, and uncontaminated food, water and air.
The doctors are calling the problem "Chernobyl AIDS." It is, literally, an acute immune deficiency syndrome, though it is not related to HIV and is not contagious. Though doctors are scientifically hesitant to blame radiation for every case of cancer and genetic abnormality, they are virtually unanimous in concluding that radiation is the cause of the syndrome.
Radiation is known to damage the immune system. Strontium attached to the bones radiates the marrow that produces white blood cells. Plutonium and cesium, which tend to spread throughout the body. Though less concentrated than the iodine-131 that collects in the thyroid, these isotopes remain active for the lifetime of an individual. Their radi
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