The direct opposite of the work of this group
was the work of the Civil Defence group, in
the composition they operated in the initial
days. General Ivanov, who initially commanded
this enterprise, in my opinion, simply failed.
They did not know what to do and even if they
received direct instructions, they did not
demonstrate any influence, management skill
or any ability to remedy the situation. I
really doubt that these are only my personal
impressions. This is how many felt, so to
say, in a subtle way, that the work of the
KGB agents, though not conspicuous, was positive,
whereas the negative helpless part of the
work of the Civil Defense was noticed in the
early days of these events. I could not leave
that unmentioned.
During the first days of the Chernobyl tragedy,
the flaws in our information service were
very obvious. Even though we have Atomenergomash,
formerly called Atomizda, medical publishing
houses, the “Knowledge” society, it turned
out that the prepared literature that could
be quickly distributed among the people to
explain what doses are extremely dangerous
for humans, how to behave when a person is
inside a zone of increased radiation danger,
a system that could correctly advise on what
to measure, how to measure, how to treat fruits
and vegetables the surface of which could
be contaminated with beta, gamma, alpha radiation
— all this literature was totally absent.
There were many books for experts, very thick,
accurate, well-written; these were stored
in the libraries. But it was precisely such
brochures, leaflets, same as the Japanese
ship with their products, such as watches,
voice recorders, video recorders, that were
needed in those conditions. Which button to
press, how long to wait, what to do. Almost
no such literature was available in the country.
I have already mentioned that I had proposed
from the beginning to create a press group
under the Government Commission that would
correctly inform the population about the
events that were happening and which would
give the right advice. For some reason, this
was not accepted. After Ryzhkov and Ligachev
arrived at the disaster zone, journalists
were allowed in and a large army of journalists
appeared. But, you know, it is hard to say
even now; it was good that it was allowed
but it was bad, because it was not organized
properly.
Why? The journalists arrived, a variety of
them, most of them very good journalists.
For example, a team from Pravda and the famous
head of the science department, Gubarev, Odinets,
many good Ukrainian journalists and documentary
filmmakers appeared. But I saw myself how
they ran up to the most famous people who
were there, pressed the record button and
privately interviewed them on some specific
issues. Sometimes, they managed to ask the
Chairman of the Government Commission or one
of the members of the Commission, about some
particular, specific topic. They, of course,
spent most of their time on the field. They
talked to people that were evacuated or with
people that worked on the 4th block, on decontamination
and this information was broadcasted.
What they collected, what was published, of
course and it is of tremendous importance
from a historical and archival point of view,
as live documentary material. And this is
necessary and essential. But at the same time,
because the information was presented from
a particular, specific point of view each
time, the country did not get a daily or maybe
at least weekly, complete picture. Because
the information came out in separate stages.
The miners were working heroically, but there
was no information about the level of radioactivity
they worked in; what was happening in the
Brest region nearby, who measures the radiation
and how? And so, together with a lot of very
accurate descriptions and comments, there
were also a lot of inaccuracies.
For example, the press spent a lot of time
on the so-called “needle” matter, which
was tinkered with for a long time. The “needle”
was an integral device that had to be placed
into the belly of the wrecked 4th block and
would have provided continuous information
about the temperature inside, about the radiation
fields and some other parameters. But, in
practice, even though the effort to put this
needle in the right place from a helicopter
was huge, there was nearly no information
received from it. There was almost zero information;
it only confirmed what had been obtained by
other simpler and more reliable methods. So
this episode of installing the needle was
described very elaborately and very, so to
say, extensively.
At the same time, the enormous amount of work
done by the dosimetrists, the humble work
of the young people from the Kurchatov Institute
led by Shekalov or Borov or Vasiliev, the
work of the “Ryanovskaya” group led by
Petrov, the work of Kombanov who was there
many times to test his dust suppression solutions,
the efforts of all this work, the analysis
of the projects that were undertaken, all
of these weren’t described properly.
And also, mainly the chronology of the events
themselves was not presented accurately. Naturally,
many people overheard things here and there
and this led to exaggerated rumours; naturally
about the number of people affected by radiation
sickness, about the levels of contamination
in Kiev and the extent of the affected area.
Any pause in the subsequent construction of
the sarcophagus was frequently taken as some
sort of catastrophe, as a collapse of some
structure, as the appearance of new emissions
or as proof that the reactor is suddenly working
again and so forth. So, no proper systematic
information was provided on these questions.
And this of course, gave rise to all sorts
of wrong and fearful depictions.
For several months, the state of emissions
from the 4th block was debated, even in the
scientific community. The fact is that experts,
those working directly at the station, experts
from Hydrometeorology service, had precisely
measured the fallout dynamics. The first,
the most powerful emission was the one that
threw millions of curies of radioactivity
in the form of noble gases and iodine at high
altitude. And those emissions were registered
by almost all the countries in the world.
Afterwards, there were a few days of active
emission of radioactive particles, fuel, mainly
due to the graphite burning. Then, the emission
of these fuel particles ceased around the
2nd of May. Then the fuel began to heat up
due to a layer of debris that accumulated
and there was a release of already separated
particles such as Cesium, Strontium, and then
they spread until the 20th and 22nd of May.
But already from the 3rd and 4th of May, there
was a constant decrease in the total radioactivity
emitted from the 4th block.
However, because of the radioactivity that
had been thrown out in the initial days, a
large number of vehicles were spreading it
on their wheels across various areas. Dust
transfer caused by the dry summer was also
increasing the contaminated areas. All of
this was incorrectly attributed to the idea
that the reactor is active and continues to
emit increasing amounts o f radioactivity.
This created, so to say, a stressful environment
for those who were working there, who were
doing the decontamination.
While the false presumptions that higher levels
of radiations was being emitted from the 4th
block, all kinds of redundant projects kept
appearing, like creating sort of a tube over
the 4th block. I fought against this project
from May; it was an absolutely useless project.
Nevertheless, various organisations were doing
such work, creating such projects for an external
shell that, if installed, would only complicate
subsequent work on the construction of the
shelter and will not have any effect on the
release of aerosol radiation.
But these talks that the reactor is “smouldering”,
emitting radioactivity in considerable amounts,
were so strong that orders were given to manufacture
various types of covers for it. They were
designed, tested, but the matter ended when
one of the last such constructions immediately
crashed down while it was being lifted by
a helicopter for testing and was completely
destroyed. This put an end to such projects.
These projects were devised under the influence
of rumours, inaccurate information and attempts
were made to implement them. God forbid, had
any of them been implemented, they would only
have complicated the future work.
I remember how during the war there were two
types of daily communications which were published
in our newspapers or TASS reports: One where
we recaptured German-occupied points, where
we retreated, where we took a large number
of prisoners, where we suffered a partial
defeat. This was precise official communication
which provided an account of the joyous and
bitter developments on the front lines. That
was accurate TASS information but along with
it there was the second type of communication,
which comprised of many journalistic articles
about specific battles, about specific people,
about heroes on the home front and so forth.
So, at Chernobyl, our press reported a lot
of information of the second type, about people,
about their impressions, about what was happening
there, but reported very little, about what
has happened so far and what has changed.
This, in my opinion, was a flaw in the communication
system, firstly. And secondly, there were
too few statements by expert scientists.
I recall, perhaps, only one statement by Professor
Ivanov from Moscow Engineering Physics Institute.
A large article was published where he tried
to simply explain what these REMs are, milliroentgens,
at which levels they pose a real threat to
human health, at which level they don’t,
how to behave in conditions with increased
radiation levels. This, as far as I can remember,
was the only article that had a helpful, calming
effect on others. But the number of such articles
could certainly have been way higher.
It seems to me that they were overly modest
and careful when writing about what happened
at the station itself, why the accident occurred,
whose fault it was, whether the reactor was
defective or the actions of the staff were
wrong. Of course, much has been written about
this and I myself was involved in describing
the events that preceded the accident. But,
in reality, I think that the full picture
of exactly what happened and how is not entirely
clear to anyone. Overall, this extraordinary
and tragic event, a difficult situation of
immense magnitude has shown that it requires
not only the mobilisation of considerable
communication resources, but also a very creative
and skilful use of these resources, to ensure
that the population receives information in
the needed sequence and quantity, who can
refer to the information with complete confidence,
and most importantly, be able to use this
information for practical purposes; or to
indicate when to worry, and conversely, when
to stay calm so that it is quite regular and
not sudden. Altogether, these were extremely
important questions.
Sometimes, I even think that an event of this
magnitude could have had a special television
and newspaper section consisting of two parts.
The Chernobyl part of this section would be
exclusively official, to provide precise information
from the Government Commission at the time
when this section is released and the second
part should be an emotional part, narrative
with personal opinions. This, altogether,
is a serious question about how to and to
what extent, cover such large, very unpleasant
and difficult events that affect and alarm
almost the entire country’s population and
not only.
Since I have touched upon communications a
little, it may be the right time to express
some personal opinions about how on earth
I got involved with this story, how I was
connected to it, how I understood the history
and quality of the development of nuclear
energy and how I understand it now. Rarely
have any of us really spoken frankly and accurate
about this.
I graduated from the Faculty of Physicochemical
Engineering of the Moscow Institute of Chemistry
and Technology named after Mendeleyev. This
faculty trained specialists, mainly researchers,
who were then supposed to work in the field
of nuclear industry, that is, being able to
separate isotopes, to work with radioactive
substances, to extract uranium from the ore,
bring it to the needed condition, make nuclear
fuel from it, to process nuclear fuel that
had been removed from the reactor having a
strong radioactivity component, to extract
useful products from it as well as the dangerous
and hazardous parts, to be able to compact
them, bury them so that they would not harm
humans and use parts of radioactive resources
for the national economy, medicine maybe.
This is the group of specific subjects I was
trained on.
Then, I graduated from the Kurchatov Institute
in the field of nuclear fuel reprocessing.
Academician Kikoev tried to convince me to
continue with postgraduate studies because
he liked my graduation thesis. But my comrades
and I agreed to work for a while at one of
the nuclear plants to get some practical skills
in the field that would later become the subject
of our research. I was sort of the proponent
of this idea and so I couldn’t accept the
offer of postgraduate studies and left for
Tomsk. I got into one of our closed cities
where I participated in launching one of the
radiochemical plants. That was very interesting.
The exciting time when a young man begins
practice. I worked at this plant for about
two years. And then I was pulled out, with
the permission of the communist party, for
my postgraduate studies at the same Kurchatov
Institute. I have to mention that I was already
a communist party member since the beginning
of my time at the institute.
With the encouragement of my friend and comrade
Vladimir Dmitrievich Klimov, who worked there,
I passed the candidate exams at the Tomsk
Polytechnic Institute and left after passing
the exams to work on my candidate thesis.
My first PHD thesis was proposed to me and
was about tackling the problem of a gas phase
reactor that would contain gaseous uranium
hexachloride as fuel and such problems, namely
the problem of interaction at high temperatures
of uranium hexachloride with construction
materials. These were the problems that I
was researching. After obtaining a lot of
data, I wrote a large report that could have
been the basis for my dissertation, or maybe
it already was a complete dissertation.
But at this time, my comrade postgraduate
Viktor Konstantinovich Popov informed me that
in Canada, Professor Bartlett had done excellent,
staggering chemist’s work on obtaining a
true xenon compound, one of the noble gases.
This information captured my imagination and
I devoted all my subsequent professional work
to synthesising such unusual compounds, using
various physical methods, that would be powerful
oxidizing agents that have a number of unusual
properties which I was happy to work on and
on the basis on which it was possible to build
a whole range of technological processes.
And this is how my professional work was progressing,
which gave me the ability to successively
defend the candidate thesis, the doctoral
thesis, dissertations. Later, with the development
of these works, they were evaluated and they
all led to me being elected into the Academy
of Sciences. The research part of the work
was awarded the USSR State prize. The applied
part was awarded the Lenin prize. So, this
was my own professional work to which I managed
to attract the most interesting young people
who, with good education and understanding,
are still developing the extremely interesting
area of Chemical physics—from which I’m
sure will originate very many developments,
important for practice and for education.
