Chernobyl... More than 30 years have passed since this word broke into our lives as the greatest tragedy, it announced to the world about the largest man-made disaster of the twentieth century. Terribly frightened by the "peaceful atom", the townsfolk were ready to believe in the most incredibly fantastic version of what had happened: an earthquake, aliens, a test of a new weapon. And the official leadership was in no hurry to announce the result of the investigation.
Deadly radiation, mutants, cancer and all that - this is the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the word Chernobyl. This place causes panic fear in millions of people around the world. In the history of mankind, there has never been such a terrible tragedy, the culprit of which was the carelessness of people. The world still lives in captivity of replicated clichés, deeply rooted in the subconscious. Everyone fully realized that the atom can serve not only peaceful purposes.
More than 30 years have passed, and many scientists who tried to unravel the mystery of that tragic April day in 1986 are still haunted by the main reason that led to the destruction of the 4th reactor. Eyewitness liquidators who survived said: "You can't even try to talk about what happened at Chernobyl if you haven't seen the destroyed reactor with your own eyes."
One thing is known for sure, that the experiment that was conducted that night at the fourth reactor got out of control of the station workers.
An eyewitness of the first minutes of the man-made disaster - the head of the station shift B. Rogozhkin described it this way: “On the night of April 26, 1986, I observed a luminous column from the reactor shaft, of a regular cylindrical shape, with a height and diameter of the pipe of the second stage (the diameter of the pipe is 20 meters, and its height is 100 meters). Inside this luminous column, figures of various shapes (similar to how it happens in a Chinese lantern), while the colors were such as I have never seen in my life.
The result of the explosion was regarded as a global man-made disaster on a planetary scale: 190 tons of radioactive substances released into the atmosphere and eight tons of radioactive fuel, which was equivalent to the explosion of five hundred atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. More than 145 thousand square kilometers of the territory of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia were contaminated with radiation.
But the worst thing in this story is that the population was warned of the danger only two days later. As always, statesmen put their reputation at stake, then only the lives of thousands of people. One hundred and fifteen thousand people began to evacuate from the exclusion zone with a great delay.
The Chernobyl exclusion zone is the largest area in Europe with closed access, it is comparable in size to some countries. And in the center of this zone, the Chernobyl nuclear power plant is a monument to the largest man-made disaster in the world.
Artists, as creative people, have never stood aside from all the topical problems taking place on the globe. And the topic of Chernobyl did not bypass them.
Many artists of Belarus, Ukraine, Russia are among those who themselves come from areas affected by radiation, who saw with their own eyes the horror into which the catastrophe plunged the fertile region, located in the very center of Europe. Their works are imbued with tragedy and pain, they make you think about the main thing - about the price of human carelessness, and about the priceless life of the person himself.
And some creators, years later, go to those places to feel that atmosphere and throw out their impressions and aching feelings of longing, fear, pain from what they saw - on canvas, in stone sculpture, poetry. And some leave graffiti drawings on the walls of the collapsing city, which "sound" like a plea for help.
And here is the area of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant,
The village of Pripyat is a small miracle.
Here the roofs touch the sky
Houses multi-storey range.
The village of chemists, installers, doctors,
And power engineers, whose work is especially significant,
Who by his labor prowess
The country benefits in kilowatts.
Now he suddenly became empty and died out,
There is no reason for people to stay here,
After all, this formerly inhabited area
Now declared an infested zone.
Twenty-three years later, the Chernobyl plant stopped generating electricity. "Currently, work is underway to decommission the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and transform the fourth power unit destroyed as a result of the accident into an environmentally safe system." A team of seven hundred people works at the nuclear power plant, who, with their work in inhuman conditions, accomplishes a feat in the name of all living things. The nuclear monster must be completely eliminated by 2065. And the true causes of the explosion are still unknown, and another apocalypse can happen again at any moment...
On April 26, 1986, during a completely planned procedure at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, everything began to develop in a completely different way, as described by the regulations and as common sense suggests ...
Matvey Vologzhanin
Any event in the world consists of so many factors that we can safely say that 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 already almost overtaken some plants in terms of success in this area. While we are just living, you can not pay much attention to what is actually happening around you. Sounds of varying volumes are heard on the street, more or less cars seem to be moving in different directions, either a mosquito flew past the nose, or the remnants of yesterday's hallucination, and around the corner they hurriedly bring an elephant, which you did not even notice.
Workers of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. 1984
But we are calm. We know that there are Rules. The multiplication table, hygienic norms, the Military Regulations, the Criminal Code and Euclidean geometry - all that helps us to believe in the regularity, orderliness and, most importantly, the predictability of what is happening. How was it 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 slightly burned"?
Troubles begin when disasters occur. Whatever order they may be, they almost always remain inexplicable and incomprehensible. Why did the sole of this still completely new left sandal fall off, while the right one is full of strength and health? Why, out of a thousand cars that drove through a frozen puddle that day, only one flew into a ditch? Why on April 26, 1986, during a completely planned procedure at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, everything began to develop in a completely different way than usual, not in the way 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 forty seconds, Alexander Akimov, the shift supervisor of Chernobyl Unit 4, ordered the reactor to be shut down at the end of the work carried out before the shutdown of the power unit for the planned repairs. The reactor operator Leonid Toptunov removed the cap from the AZ button, which prevents accidental erroneous pressing, and pressed the button. At this signal, 187 control rods of the reactor began to move down into the core. The backlight lamps on the mnemonic panel lit up, and the arrows of the rod position indicators began to move. Alexander Akimov, standing half-turned to the reactor control panel, watched this, he also saw that the “bunnies” 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 from the ongoing 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, alarms appeared. L. Toptunov shouted about an emergency increase in power. But there was nothing he could do. He did everything he could - he held the AZ button, the CPS rods went into the active zone. There are no other resources at his disposal. Yes, and everyone else too. A. Akimov sharply shouted: "Turn off the reactor!" He jumped to the console and de-energized 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 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 salvation ... Two powerful explosions followed with a short interval. The AZ rods stopped moving before going half way. They had nowhere else to go. In one hour, twenty-three minutes, forty-seven seconds, the reactor was destroyed by a power boost on prompt neutrons. This is a collapse, the ultimate catastrophe that can happen in a power reactor. They didn’t comprehend it, they didn’t prepare for it.”
This is an excerpt from Anatoly Dyatlov's book 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, recognized as one of the perpetrators of the tragedy and 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 vaguely imagines what is happening inside the reactor, he probably did not understand what was described above. In principle, this can be conditionally explained in this way.
Imagine that we have tea in a glass, which is trying to boil non-stop on its own. Well, here's the tea. So that he does not smash the glass to smithereens and fill the kitchen with hot steam, we regularly lower metal spoons into the glass - in order to cool it down. The colder we need tea, the more spoons we shove. And vice versa: to make the tea hotter, we pull out the spoons. Of course, the carbide-boron and graphite rods that are placed in the reactor work according to a slightly different principle, but the essence of this does not change much.
Now let's remember what is the main problem facing all power plants in the world. Most of all, power engineers have no trouble with fuel prices, not with drinking electricians, and not with crowds of “greens” picketing their checkpoints. The biggest trouble in the life of any power engineer is the uneven power consumption by the station's customers. The unpleasant habit of mankind to work during the day, sleep at night, and even wash in chorus, shave and watch TV shows leads to the fact that the energy produced and consumed, instead of flowing in a smooth uniform stream, is forced to jump like a mad 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. This is especially difficult at nuclear power plants, since it is rather difficult to explain a chain reaction when it should be more active, and when it can be slowed down.
Engineers at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. 1980
In the early 1980s, the USSR began to slowly explore the possibility of rapidly increasing and decreasing the power of reactors. This method of controlling energy loads was, in theory, much simpler and more profitable than all the others.
This program, of course, was not discussed openly, the station personnel could only guess why these “scheduled 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 was 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 so far, no one has been able to properly answer the main question of the Chernobyl disaster: why did the reactor power not fall after the introduction of the rods at that time, but, on the contrary, inexplicably increased sharply?
The two most authoritative bodies - the USSR Gosatomnadzor Commission and the IAEA Special Committee, after several years of work, gave birth to documents, each of which is crammed with facts about how the accident proceeded, but one cannot find an answer to the question “why?” on a single page in these detailed studies. 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 Phacochoerus "a Funtika: « No, well, that's slander! The IAEA staff, however, expressed themselves 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 at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. »
Less official researchers, on the contrary, put forward their versions with might and main - one more beautiful and more convincing than the other. And if there were not so many of them, one of them would probably be worth believing.
Various institutions, organizations and simply world-famous scientists in turn declared the perpetrators of the incident:
incorrect design of the rods; incorrect design of the reactor itself;
the error of personnel who reduced the power of the reactor for too long; a local unnoticed earthquake that occurred exactly under the Chernobyl nuclear power plant; ball lightning; still unknown to science particle, which sometimes occurs in a chain reaction.
The alphabet is not enough to list all the authoritative versions (non-authoritative ones, of course, as always, look more beautiful and contain such wonderful things as evil Martians, cunning cereushniks and an angry Jehovah. It is a pity that such a respected scientific publication as MAXIM cannot go on about the low tastes of the crowd and with gusto to describe all this in more detail.
These strange methods of dealing with radiation
The list of items that are usually required to be distributed to the public in the event of a radiation hazard seems incomplete to the uninitiated. And where is the button accordion, boa and net? But in fact, the things on this list are not so useless.
Mask Someone seriously believes that gamma rays, instantly penetrating steel, will save in front of five layers of gauze? Gamma rays are not. But 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 shortest living elements of a radioactive release - has the unpleasant property of settling in the thyroid gland for a long time and making it completely unusable. Tablets with iodine are recommended to be taken so that your thyroid gland of this iodine is filled 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 vials.
canned food Milk and vegetables would be the most useful foods when exposed to radiation, but alas, they are the first to become infected. And then comes the meat, which ate vegetables and gave milk. So it is better not to collect pasture in the infected region. Especially mushrooms: in them the concentration of radioactive chemical elements is highest.
liquidation
Recording of rescue dispatchers' conversations 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 overalls and helmets. They had no other means of protection, and they did not know about the radiation threat - only after a couple of hours information began to spread that this fire was somehow different from the usual one.
By morning, firefighters put out the flames and began to faint - radiation damage began to affect. 136 employees and rescuers who found themselves 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 engaged in the liquidation of the consequences of the explosion (almost half of them were conscripts, many of whom were sent to Chernobyl, in fact, by force). The very site of the disaster was covered with a mixture of lead, boron and dolomites, 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 have such numbers been found in densely populated areas.
The deafening silence of the Soviet authorities about the accident did not then seem as strange as it is now. Hiding bad or exciting news from the population was so common practice at that time that even information about a sex maniac operating in the area could not reach the ears of a serene public for years; and only when the next "Fischer" or "Mosgaz" began to count their victims by tens, or even hundreds, the district police officers were given the task to quietly bring to the attention of parents and teachers the fact that it would probably be better for the kids not to run alone along the street.
Therefore, the city of Pripyat was evacuated the next day after the accident hastily, but quietly. People were told that they were being taken out for a day, a maximum of two, and they were asked not to take any things with them so as not to overload the transport. The authorities did not say a word about radiation.
Rumors, of course, spread, but the vast majority of the inhabitants of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia have 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 the May Day demonstrations, at least in cities located directly in the path of polluted clouds, but it was considered that such a violation of the eternal order would cause unhealthy unrest in society. So the residents of Kyiv, Minsk and other cities managed to run around with balloons and carnations under the radioactive rain.
But a radioactive release of this magnitude was impossible to hide. The Poles and Scandinavians were the first to raise the cry, to which those same magical clouds flew in from the east and brought with them a lot of interesting things.
Affected
Of course, the government could continue to pretend that nothing was happening, but here we can justify the Soviet officials a little: they were still not such complete ghouls who sleep and see how to turn two hundred and a half million of their subjects into covered with ulcers mutants. From the very beginning, they consulted with scientists, primarily with miners, trying to find out the degree of threat to the health of citizens of the regions neighboring Chernobyl. The content of these negotiations is either not recorded or is still secret, but, apparently, it was the scientists who exuded exceptional optimism at that time.
Indirect evidence confirming that scientists gave the government the go-ahead to keep silent about Chernobyl can be the fact that scientist Valery Legasov, a member of the government commission investigating 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 hanged himself, leaving in his office a dictaphone record telling about the details of the accident, and that part of the record, which chronologically should have been a story about the reaction of the authorities 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 Agency for Atomic Energy stand on the fact that only those several hundred people who took part in the liquidation in the first days of the explosion, and even then with banknotes, can be considered really victims of the explosion. For example, the article “Who Helped Create the Chernobyl Myth”, written by experts from the FAAE and IBRAE RAS in 2005, analyzes statistics on the health status of residents of contaminated areas and, recognizing that, in general, the population there gets sick a little more often, sees the reason only in the fact that, succumbing to alarmist moods, people, firstly, run to the doctors with every pimple, and secondly, for many years they have been living in unhealthy stress caused by hysteria in the yellow press. 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 the liquidators is not the consequences of exposure, but alcoholism, caused by the same irrational fear of radiation. Even the phrase "radiation danger" is written by our peaceful nuclear scientists exclusively in quotation marks.
But this is one side of the coin. For every nuclear worker who is convinced that there is no cleaner and safer energy in the world than atomic energy, there is a member of an environmental or human rights organization who is ready to sow that same panic in 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 fall ill or be born sick within the next 50 years.
Between these two poles there are dozens and hundreds of international organizations whose statistical studies contradict each other so much that in 2003 the IAEA was forced to create the Chernobyl Forum organization, whose task would be to analyze these statistics in order to create at least some reliable picture what is happening.
And so far, there is nothing clear with estimates of the consequences of the disaster. The increase in mortality from areas close to Chernobyl can be explained by the mass migration of young people from there. A slight "rejuvenation" of oncological diseases - by checking local residents 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 ladybugs in the closed zone around Chernobyl is the subject of fierce disputes. It seems like the burdocks grow amazingly juicy, and the cows are well-fed, and the number of mutations in the local flora and fauna is within the natural norm. But what is the harmlessness of radiation here, and what is the beneficial effect of the absence of people for many kilometers around, it is difficult to answer.
Part 1
In one well-known old anecdote, quite good advice is given: if you need to report both good and bad news at once, it is better to start with the worse ones. In other words, first swallow the bitter pill, and only then the sweetened one... My story is far from a joke. But the above principle, perhaps, should be observed. Therefore, I will begin with a sad, one might say, ominous message. Since the beginning of the fifties, near the great city on the Neva in a vital area - on Lake Ladoga, experiments were carried out with radioactive substances, while their spraying on the ground was carried out in various ways, including using explosives - a kind of imitation of a nuclear explosion .. There is another unfortunate fact: the negative consequences of these atomic experiments (one might say excrement) were later eliminated only by Mother Nature herself. They were eliminated, so to speak, in general, but we will talk about special cases a little later. By the way, I'll leave the good news for the finale: "happy ending" in this story is still inevitable. And now for the details.
It is not given to us to predict how our word will resonate... In my opinion, this poetic maxim applies only in part to the work of journalists. We are still obliged to look at the root of our publications, because a spark of creative thought, falling on the hayloft of human emotions, is quite capable of igniting a fire of public passions ... I certainly took all this into account when I was preparing an article last fall about a half-flooded destroyer found on Ladoga "Kit" with radioactivity in the hold. The alarm of Chernobyl continues to disturb people's hearts.
To prevent the explosion of "radiophobic" passions around the Ladoga problem, to give people truthful and objective information about the radiation situation, and most importantly, to help the military quickly eliminate the dangerous object without interference, without unnecessary hype - these tasks he tried to solve in his publications. Of course, at that time I did not imagine that "Keith" would become only a kind of tip of the iceberg in the chronicle of events that took place on the islands of the Western Archipelago in the post-war years. However, there were guesses. Therefore, after the publication of the materials, I was looking forward to the responses. Not only from fans of the "atomic" theme. The main thing is from witnesses and participants in those events.
Didn't wait right away. The specifics of the problem were not slow to emerge. People who knew a lot were in no hurry to contact me. The well-known "non-disclosure of state secrets" agreement, which operates with iron stability, regardless of state troubles and restructurings, had an effect here. However, this is not the point now. The main thing is that people were found and discovered the necessary truth. This truth made up a solid package of documentary evidence. Of course, a lot needed to be checked, clarified, even supplemented by the relevant department. So I ended up in Moscow, in one of the departments of the USSR Ministry of Defense, which coordinates the work to eliminate the consequences of the tests carried out earlier on Ladoga.
Still, it is a pity that at the sharp turn of the country's history, after the stormy brainwashing of our brains with a newspaper and television mixture of truth, lies and demagogy, a steadily biased attitude towards the people who created the nuclear shield of the state has matured in us. Alas, an unpresentable image of these specialists is inscribed in the public consciousness: inaccessible to journalists, conservative to the marrow of their bones, deciding everything behind closed doors, zealously advocating nuclear explosions - to spite environmentalists and democrats. Now they - like all army men, by the way - are no longer called citizens of the country, a kind of nickname is in use: "Armed Forces".
What to hide, and my thoughts were powdered with a touch of such convictions. And then there are cataclysms in the Baltics. There is also our Nevsky Sasha, which divides everyone into "ours" - "yours" ...
I was helped to destroy this stereotype by two sociable, good-natured, energetic colonels who are directly involved in the Ladoga problem, moreover, its land part. The program of liquidation work on the water - lifting from the ground and transporting the radioactive "Kit" to the burial site - is being implemented by specialists of the Navy, so to speak, "whalers".
After this clarification, we began to analyze the accumulated evidence. Although the fourth participant in this meeting was, as usual, the invisible and inaudible "madame secrecy", my interlocutors were not at all secretive, answered the Leningrader in detail "with a watering can and a notebook", did not fight back "with a machine gun" even from questions that clearly gravitated towards defense sacraments. It seems that frankness here stemmed from respect for the professional duties of each of the parties.
Let me make one more personal observation in this regard. In vain, it seems to me, many angry fellow journalists curse the "closedness" of the military leadership. Times have changed. Some experience of contacts with the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the USSR convinces me of one thing: the support of the high command will be provided if you manage to prove your right to the chosen topic, show your competence and objectivity. Only and everything. By the way, a plowman working on a spring field, or a miner in the face, most of all concerned about cutting down coal, reacts exactly the same way to questions from a correspondent. This is verified.
So, the main thing. There are no documents in the army archives of the country that reveal the methodology, technology, qualitative and quantitative indicators of tests carried out on the Ladoga Islands with "special" charges. Only a small sheet of paper was found, which, by the way, was written by hand. It briefly reported on experiments with radioactive substances on the experimental ship "Kit". It's all. Beriev's system of protection of secrets was brought to perfection precisely on the "atomic" subject. It seems that this is that rare example of "secrecy" that was for the good. Even typists were not trusted to print such materials. Much was destroyed shortly after the experiments. Reports on the Ladoga works probably suffered the same fate. Who knows where the film and photographic materials, filmed at the same time, disappeared.
The "details" of long-standing experiments at the Ladoga test site, military specialists had, one might say, to probe the terrain with radiometers-dosimeters. The zones and levels of radioactive contamination on the islands were determined. Developed methods for the elimination of "pollution". This work took many months. The necessary data has been collected. Maps of "spots" made up. What's next?
- you arrived on time- summed up the conversation interlocutors. - The results of our surveys must now be tested on the islands with veteran test participants..
We arrived at the islands in the dark. Dropped anchor. They began to wait for dawn. Dawn flared up slowly - quiet, cold, thoughtful. While the boat was being launched, I filmed with a video camera the winter splendor of the islands, illuminated by the bluish light of the morning.
The boat was crammed to capacity - dosimetrist officers, radiologists, rowers, veterans of the unit. They pushed off the steel side, leaned on the oars - they went on calm water. From the ship alive, filled with warmth, sounds and smells of comfort, they moved to another ship - dead, dumb, blackening with rusty sides and torn superstructures. As if from the current bright, noisy time, they went to the gloomy, cold past. I looked at the test veterans Alexander Alekseevich Kukushkin and Evgeny Yakovlevich Tsaryuk. What are they thinking now? What does their memory tell them?
Their group was taken to Libau by train. There was no speculation about the future service, because the transfer from one fleet to another in that post-war tense time was a common thing. The people in the group crept up experienced, not the first year of service. They understood that such an experienced fleet lads were being prepared for a serious matter.
And so it happened. They were divided into teams into two depth-measuring boats - GPB-382 and GPB-383. The commanders were midshipmen Kudryashov and Alekseev. The task was not set for the teams right away, they only hinted: you would go to Leningrad. Such an address, of course, suited the young sailors quite well.
Soon, the ships were transferred from the military harbor to a commercial port. stood aboard the "Big Hunter". Its commander, Captain-Lieutenant Nazarenko, led a group of three ships on the passage to Leningrad.
On a serene May morning on the fifty-third we entered the Neva. Three days defended at the Lieutenant Schmidt bridge. The sailors walked along the streets of St. Petersburg, looked at the architecture and the girls. Then there was a meeting with one of the leaders of the new unit - a respectable, learned rear admiral. From the conversation, we found out the main thing - there are no plans for a special stress in the work, they will provide science. If they knew what kind of science, they would have diminished their joy. Already "four" went to Ladoga. A raid tug from a special detachment of harbor ships led two floating pontoon piers. The course was laid on a brand new map, where the former Finnish names of the islands were changed. The secrecy of future work began with geography.
The first berth was placed at the Suri fortress (now Heinäsenmaa). The axes of the construction battalion workers were already banging here. They erected headquarters, barracks, a bathhouse, warehouses and other buildings for life and work. At the highest point of the island - in the concrete tower of the command post of the former Finnish fortifications - a post for observation and communication was now built. Communication passages to cannon caponiers, dugouts and machine-gun nests with steel caps literally encircled the island. The old-timers used to say: all these fortifications in a solid granite slab were cut down by Soviet prisoners of war during the war years.
Many of them did not live to see liberation. The former enemy defense stronghold was now being turned into the operational center of the test site. Colonel Dvorovoy was appointed its commander. The second pontoon pier took its place in one of the bays on the western shore of the lake, where the ships of the special purpose division were based, commanded by Lieutenant Commander I.A. Timofeev, Lopatin was the chief of staff. Soon the division was replenished with a new minesweeper (commander Levchenko) and a sea tug MB-81 (commander Brusov).
1978 Experimental ship "Kit" near the island of Häinesmaa. Sergey OlennikovThe largest ship of the division was the destroyer "Mobile", which was soon renamed the experimental ship "Kit". He was brought to the bay in tow. This former fascist ship of the T-12 type, transferred to our country as a reparation after the victory, served in the Baltic Fleet.
There were legends about the destroyer. According to one of them, in a group of thirty German ships of the same class - "sista ship" - this ship was the most advanced and fastest. Its speed reached 39 knots - against 37 for the rest. Once, at the end of the war, escaping from pursuit by the English squadron, he reached speeds of up to 41 knots, and thus escaped.
Its advantages were provided by increased working steam pressure and very successful "high-speed" hull contours.
In the summer of 1949, during fleet exercises in the Baltic, an accident occurred in the aft compartments of the Movable - the main steam pipeline burst. Two sailors died, two more were maimed. The heroism of the crew during the liquidation of the accident was highly noted by the command.
It was not possible to restore the steam pipeline, worn out by long operation. They did not find a replacement for high-strength Krupp steel. The destroyer was sentenced to write-off. There is no exact information about how the further fate of the destroyer commander Yurovsky, other officers and crew developed. It is only known that this ship, brought by tugboat to Ladoga at the disposal of the landfill, had on board about a hundred sailors and officers. They soon settled in the barracks on Suri, became testers. Whether they were trained people or simply retrained crew members is unknown. The empty, depopulated "Kit" was anchored off Maly Island (now Makarinsari). A ladder of large logs was lowered from the ship's stern to the shore.
Now you can walk on the snow-covered deck of the ship without fear. The winter shell, as it were, isolated the steel flooring, the rust of which was ingrained with radionuclides. The levels of "contamination" in the superstructure and holds are measured by specialists from the Leningrad Radium Institute, V.M. Gavrilov and A.A. Fetisov, who arrived with us. M.G. Pokatilov, the head of the sector of the interdepartmental department of nuclear, radiation and chemical safety of the Leningrad City Executive Committee, applies the probe of the radiometer to the tubes of the torpedo tube. An officer, a dosimetrist major, also works here with his equipment. S.A.Bobrov. - Then the destroyer was in a different position - along the island of Maly, - says Kukushkin. - I remember when they started his anchor, they hurried up and slapped him on the anchor-chain of our boat. I had to leave mine at the bottom. After they joked: they fell under the fascist! Then tests began, explosions - we were no longer in the mood for jokes.
They received the first testers from the pier at Suri. The strange appearance of these people - insulating, antiperitone suits, shoe covers on their feet, gas masks - somewhat puzzled. What will they experience? What dangers threaten? There was no talk of "chemistry". So, something else. What? The officers answered the sailors' questions briefly: there is no danger for you. They advised me to act only according to the instructions, strictly follow the commands and keep quiet. Of course, they kept quiet. A special time and a special power have already been cast in people with a special psychology: fewer questions - less worries - a calmer life. Then the old-timers of the training ground taught the naval youth to interpret the plot of their new "secret" life in a purely St. Petersburg way: "If you talk, you will please, on Liteiny, 4, where the entrance is from Kalyaeva Street, and the exit is in Siberia."
The testers landed on board the "Whale". They unloaded the measuring equipment and an unusual charge - a "shell". The charge looked harmless. A lattice wooden box with handles - like a stretcher. In the box - explosives, to which they added a "stuffing" - a glass vessel with a liquid substance. The latter was treated with special precautions: they were transported in a lead container, overloaded with a special tool. Later, the sailors found out: in the flask - a radioactive solution of high concentration. Dogs and cages with rabbits and white mice were brought from the shore to the ship. Placed the living creatures on the premises. They fiddled for a long time, connecting a subversive machine to the charge. Finally, the commander of the bot was given the command: "For cover!" GPB-383 retreated to a safe distance.
Watched from afar. There was an explosion. The echo swept between the stone islands, scaring away the birds. A smoky cloud rose over the "Whale" and quickly melted into the fine day. It looks like a harmless cloud. In fact - a cloud of radioactive isotopes. But who then knew about it? The “cab drivers” entered the very epicenter of this radioactive hell without fear and anxiety: they brought mooring lines to the “Kit”, took the testers and their equipment on board. The air poisoned by radiation was breathed without fear. They took into their hands everything that was required during the work, not even realizing that the world around was already covered with a touch of invisible sinister "dirt". Protective clothing, gloves, respirators were not issued to the sailors. Sanitary treatment was not satisfied.
Now it is difficult to explain why the scientific directors of these archaic experiments - the specialists of the "Beria" department, who have become quite skilled in handling active substances and who have studied the cruel nature of radiation well, suddenly left young, strong guys from the special purpose division serving the test site without insurance, without proper sanitary control . Perhaps the initial, clearly erroneous belief that these experiments with radioactive substances, which do not create high levels of radiation, were safe, had an effect here. The sad consequence of the experiments was the contamination of the area with long-lived isotopes, mainly strontium-90 and cesium-137. The following fact also speaks in favor of the obvious underestimation of the degree of radioactive danger by the "fathers" of the test site: the charges were detonated in relative proximity to warehouses, barracks, laboratories, where scientific and auxiliary personnel lived and worked.
It seems that the regime of special secrecy around these works also affected. For zealous special officers, the slightest leak of information from the test site was much worse than the radioactive flood that poured after the explosions on the islands, on the people operating here. On the "Whale" three such charges were blown up. The first one is on deck. The second one is in the add-on. Third in the hold. It can be assumed that the "damaging" factors of the new weapon, the ways of spreading radiation through the compartments were studied, and methods of protection were worked out. Animals housed in the explosion zone received large doses of radiation. They were then used by military doctors to study the biological consequences of explosions, to create medical preparations-radioprotectors. After each explosion, these experimental animals were taken to the laboratory, which was located nearby - on Maly Island (now Makarinsari).
And the testers serving the ship were taken to Suri. The bath, as a rule, was heated here by this hour. People undressed. Protective clothing, underwear, shoes - everything flew into the furnace. The degree of pollution was great, and no one bothered with washing. There was always a barge at the island, stuffed with the necessary things. Therefore, every time the testers left for the task, one might say, in new clothes. And in the bath they washed with a five percent solution of citric acid. The dosimetrist checked the "cleanliness" with the device, used to force them to wash. Control was where "it was ordered". And where they turned a blind eye to violations, trouble happened. None of the commanders, for example, then saw a serious mistake made when arranging a water intake for the kitchen. The drain of sewage, with radionuclides of water from the biyak, went straight into the lake. And not far from this place they took water for cooking.
On the starboard side of the submerged, listing "Whale" - two small pretty islands, separated from each other by a stream-strait, where, perhaps, a chicken is knee-deep. On the map, these islands also differ almost conditionally: Nameless N1 and N2. The first of the stone brothers is bigger. Its flat top is topped by two strong pines. Here Kukushkin departs from our group of steps twenty steps to the side and almost forty years into his past unenviable life and, having thought, listening to the whistle of the wind of time, accurately points to the hollow: "3here!" We rake the snow in the hollow and around. Through the evergreen carpet of mosses and twigs of the berry plant, radiometers immediately pick up the "choir" of radioactive decay of particles - the trace of an explosion.
The military meticulously examine the island. Here is the only point in the archipelago where nothing was found during the first survey. Maybe because pollution does not spread across the area, but through local points. This character of the spread can be explained simply: over the years since the explosion, the short-lived isotopes have decayed, while the more stable ones linger only along pits and cracks in the ground. And the LEVELS here are considerable. The exposure dose rate for "gamma" is almost five times higher than the background value. The density of surface contamination at individual points reaches one and a half thousand "beta decays" per minute per square centimeter of area. This is almost three orders of magnitude higher than the permissible level. - This island was berry, - Kukushkin recalls - and there were enough mushrooms. When we landed the testers here with their "bomb", we were very sorry. Everything will be ruined! And so it happened. The charge was powerful - the whole island was covered with an explosion. Then the "doses" categorically forbade us to go here.
Someone obeyed, while someone continued to climb the infected areas and pick mushrooms and berries. Not everyone understood the risks. - In your team, one eccentric even got used to the infected "Kit" to climb, - picks up Tsaryuk. - There were still German things, furniture. So he hunted for leather sofas. Cuts strips of skin, then trades. Outright the guy was decommissioned from the fleet. What dose he took on the "Whale" is unknown. But no more was heard from him. They will remember many more details of that unusual life and work. Remember for us, I for myself. No wonder they say. that human memory has a selective ability: to store the most difficult, dangerous, bright moments of life and forget empty, boring, idle days. They, twenty-year-old sailors, then had to take a sip of a special dash - inexplicable, intangible, possessing the devilish property to strike a fatal blow after years.
Chernobyl tragedy
20 years ago, hundreds of thousands of people from all the republics of the Soviet Union began to eliminate the consequences of the accident at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant (ChNPP), an unprecedented disaster sadly remembered by mankind that occurred on April 26, 1986. It seems that the world has not yet realized what could have happened on that day if there were not such people among us - the courageous and brave heroes of Chernobyl! They managed, at the cost of their own health and life, to pacify this most complex fire on the roof of the 4th power unit of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, destroyed as a result of a man-made disaster.
The Chernobyl fire alarm went off on April 26 at 01:26:03. Seven minutes later, on fire at the fourth power unit, the firefighters of Vladimir Pravik's on-duty guard (VPCh-2) occupied combat posts, and after 9 minutes, on call No. The head of the Chernobyl HPV-2, Leonid Telyatnikov, who was on vacation at that time, also arrived immediately; I had a day to walk, but, having learned about the fire, I urgently called an operational car and drove to the station.
“I arrived at the scene of the fire at 01:46,” he said later. - The fire was blazing with might and main, the destroyed roof of the fourth power unit was burning. The flame could spread to the third block adjacent to it, but such a catastrophe could not be allowed. I climbed to the 70-meter mark, looked around, then - down. We did not yet know that the explosion had already destroyed the reactor core - the flames and smoke did not allow us to fully assess the situation. It was necessary to suppress the fires as soon as possible, block all passages and stop the fire. Running through the engine room, where there was no fire, through the destroyed wall, I saw some unusual glow in the central hall. What is it?! Is it a reactor? I realized that this glow comes from the reactor ...
Today, almost all the details of that terrible April night of 1986 are known, and we know how hot it was there on the roof of the fourth power unit: boiling bitumen burned boots, splashed on clothes, and ate into the skin. We know how, like the legendary Panfilov front-line soldiers, 28 brave men - the fighters of the first line, did not flinch, being in the very center of the radiation zone. They withstood this inhuman test, and the roof of the fourth power unit became the peak of life for them.
We know that the Chernobyl firefighters did the greatest thing that real people can do for people - they protected Life, and by 5 o'clock in the morning they completely extinguished the fire at the station. But few people know that doctors fought for the lives of these fearless Chernobyl victims for a long time, although six of them did not manage to survive - they spent too much time fighting fire in a decisive direction. Now they - Nikolai Vashchuk, Vasily Ignatenko, Viktor Kibenok, Vladimir Pravik, Nikolai Titenok, Vladimir Tishura - rest at the Mitinsky cemetery in Moscow.
The tragic events in Chernobyl from all over the world caused flows of letters expressing sincere admiration for the courage of Soviet firefighters, sympathy and support for the peoples of the Soviet Union. Every week, the mail brought testimonies of the professional solidarity of firefighters from Austria, Bulgaria, Great Britain, Hungary, Italy, Luxembourg, the USA, France and many other countries. Here is what Lieutenant-General Ilya Donchev, head of the CUPO of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the NRB, wrote in his message: “Dear comrades! We, employees of the Central Fire Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the People's Republic of Bulgaria and all Bulgarian firefighters, learned with pain and anxiety about the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant ... We admire the heroism and courage of your employees, who were the first to fight the deadly elements ... Soviet fire protection can be proud that she has brought up and continues to bring up such worthy sons of her people ... Any of us should be ready to accomplish such a feat. Glory to you, dear brothers in arms!”
Surprising as it may seem, today the vast majority of our fellow citizens know virtually nothing about the fact that only a month after the April accident, the Chernobyl nuclear power plant caught fire for the second time. On the night of May 22-23, 1986, the most alarming message was received by the government Commission: “A burning of the cables of the 4th unit was detected at the station ...”. The consequences of the May fire at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant could be terribly terrible, but again the firefighters did not retreat before the flames that were gaining strength under the leadership of lieutenant colonel of the internal service Vladimir Maksimchuk. As a member of the operational headquarters of the GUPO of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs, he prepared a group of experienced colleagues for a business trip to Chernobyl and arrived in Chernobyl on May 13 to directly control the combined fire department. Every day and for several hours he was in the zone of the station with an increased level of radiation. And once, while studying the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, he received a serious injury to the lower leg of his left leg, hitting a block of graphite that remained on the site of the 4th block after the April explosion. The leg was so swollen that Vladimir Mikhailovich could no longer put on boots, then he had to put out the incredibly difficult “tunnel fire” that happened soon after in sports sneakers. Like the fighters of the first echelon in April, so in May 1986, firefighters led by Lieutenant Colonel Maksimchuk managed to curb the flame and completely eliminate the source of combustion in the high-risk zone at the station. True, unlike the April fiery odyssey of the first echelon fighters, this no less impressive feat of firefighters was not widely publicized and therefore the country did not react in any way to the emergence of new heroes of Chernobyl.
Vladimir Nikitenko, who personally knew Vladimir Maksimchuk well and served with him for many years, a veteran of the capital’s fire department, Vladimir Nikitenko, set himself a noble goal - to restore as fully as possible, using documents and eyewitnesses’ recollections, the picture of the May attack on the fire site successfully carried out by firefighters in Chernobyl. The materials he collected unequivocally testified that only thanks to the highly professional actions of the employees of the 01 service, the fire was localized and liquidated in time, which ultimately made it possible to avoid a second Chernobyl tragedy. But the country's leadership decided not to make this event public, and therefore the feat of firefighters remained unknown for quite a long time. And only after the death of Vladimir Mikhailovich Maksimchuk, more and more people gradually began to learn the truth about the second Chernobyl fire. In the recently published book of Lieutenant-General of the Internal Service Nikolai Demidov, “The Ministry of Internal Affairs is the shield of Chernobyl”, it is emphasized: “It seems that the Russian Government has not yet said its word in perpetuating the memory of the Chernobyl hero Maksimchuk V.M.. I say this with full consciousness that for cementing the friendship of the three Slavic peoples, Vladimir Mikhailovich, with his life and death, did immeasurably more than many statesmen of the country.
Of course, you need to bow low before the entire initiative group headed by retired colonel of the internal service Vladimir Nikitenko, who managed to achieve state recognition of the special significance of the feat of Vladimir Maksimchuk: in December 2003, Vladimir Mikhailovich was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Russian Federation. His wife, a member of the Writers' Union of Russia, Lyudmila Maksimchuk, recalling her firefighter husband, stated with an undisguised note of bitterness: "As you can see, the flame of history is selective." In her poem "The Star of the Hero of Russia", as if in spirit, she confesses to us:
And better late than never...
And here it is - the Hero Star.
During life they said: this is nonsense;
There was no fire, no heroes.
Hero! He didn't need an order
He decided everything himself - and saved all the firefighters;
The firemen did not flinch, they saved
And the station, and the inhabitants of the Earth!
There was a feat - eighteen years in the shadows.
They hid, they lied... Where are they now?!
The Hero's star was awarded to the family.
That star has a high price:
She is one for all. Firemen - system.
So know that any of them is a hero!
Of course, awards are only a symbol, a distinctive sign of the recognition of deeds committed by people with a capital letter. And if there was the title of "Hero of the Planet", then the list of holders of this award would certainly include the names of all the heroes-liquidators of Chernobyl, including this Russian hero - Vladimir Maksimchuk. But it’s a pity that humane humanity has not yet come up with such an award, but just think what would happen to all the countries of Europe and the current “independent” states - the republics of the former USSR, if there were no people like Vladimir Maksimchuk among us? And these people saved our world, giving their lives and health for it.
OUR REFERENCE. Despite the crisis phenomena in social and political life, a cohesive social force has been operating in the Russian Federation for many years - the Chernobyl Union of Russia. This is an association of citizens who took part in the liquidation of the Chernobyl and other radiation accidents and disasters. In their work, the members of the Union repeatedly confirmed their high moral qualities, which they showed during the tragedy. The Chernobyl Union of Russia, in a difficult time for the country, stood on a par with those who fought for stability in society, democracy, unity and justice.
The accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant was the largest in the history of nuclear energy. An objective understanding of its environmental, social, medical and psychological consequences is the subject of many years of study by specialists in many countries.
It focused the most negative features of the current political, economic, social and environmental state of the country. The accident revealed all the negative that modern technology and technology can carry with inept leadership and the use of scientific and technological progress. As a result of the Chernobyl accident, 50,000,000 Ci, various radionuclides, entered the environment. Due to the difficult meteorological situation after the accident, vast territories of Ukraine (410,075 sq. km), Belarus (46,006 sq. km), and the European part of Russia (57,001 sq. km) turned out to be significantly polluted. Trajectories of polluted air masses crossed the territories of Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Poland and Scandinavian countries, in the south - Moldova, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, Turkey. The territories of Austria, Germany, Italy, Great Britain and a number of other Western European countries have been contaminated.
According to official estimates from three countries (Belarus, Russia, Ukraine), at least more than 9,000,000 people were affected in one way or another by the Chernobyl disaster.
In the RSFSR, 16 regions and one republic with a population of about 3,000,000 people living in more than 12,000 settlements were exposed to radioactive contamination. World public opinion rightly assessed the catastrophe at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant as the result of many years of inhumane practice towards man and nature. The Chernobyl disaster reflected all the viciousness of the past totalitarian system: ingrained inattention to people, widespread negligence, neglect of labor standards and its safety.
An atmosphere of secrecy reigned in the use of nuclear energy. Alarm signals about accidents at the Leningrad NPP - in 1975, at the 2nd unit of the Chernobyl NPP - in 1982, were hushed up.
The state systematically saved on the safety of nuclear energy, the dosimetric control system was in a neglected state. Protective equipment was far from perfect and was produced in minimal batches. Emergencies often occurred in the complete absence of information among the population about the existing and possible danger to health and life.
In the period from 1986 to 1990, over 800,000 citizens of the USSR were involved in work in the Chernobyl zone, including 300,000 people from Russia. The scale of the catastrophe could have become immeasurably greater if it were not for the courage and selfless actions of the liquidators.
Time carries away the events and facts of the Chernobyl tragedy into the past. In the modern period of development of our society, Chernobyl remains as a symbol of oversight and fear, which should be forgotten rather than remembered. Therefore, efforts to overcome the negative consequences of the disaster were often hasty and ineffective. Mistakes in legislative activities for the social protection of affected citizens were accompanied by a violation of their constitutional rights to compensation for damage caused to health and property. “There is no such thing as someone else's misfortune” – the time-forgotten call for humanity and mercy must find real content in civil society.
More than 20 years have passed since the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. What can be said about its consequences? If you turn to the International Medical Information System Medline, it is easy to find that more than 2000 scientific articles have been published on this issue. But many issues related to an objective assessment of the consequences of the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant remain unclear and unresolved. The accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant has become the largest nuclear accident. In the first weeks after the accident, the radiation situation was determined mainly by iodine radionuclides and was very tense. In a number of regions, dose rates reached hundreds of microR/h, and often exceeded 1 mR/h. Over large areas, an increased content of radionuclides in milk, vegetables, meat and other types of agricultural products was observed. During this period, the predominant irradiation of the thyroid gland, which absorbs iodine radionuclides that enter the body with food and air, took place. Subsequently, as short-lived radionuclides decayed, the radiation situation began to be determined by cesium radionuclides. Works on radiation monitoring of the country's territory were launched; in total, more than 6 million square kilometers of the country's territory were surveyed in Russia. On the basis of aerial gamma and ground surveys, maps were prepared and published on contamination with cesium-137, strontium-90 and plutonium-239 of the European part of Russia. In 1997, a multi-year European Community project to create an atlas of cesium pollution in Europe after the Chernobyl accident was completed. According to estimates made within the framework of this project, the territory of 17 European countries with a total area of 207.5 thousand square meters. km turned out to be contaminated with cesium with a pollution density of over 1 Ci/sq.km.
Directly during the accident, more than 300 people from the NPP personnel and firefighters were exposed to acute radiation exposure. Of these, 237 were initially diagnosed with acute radiation sickness (ARS). The most seriously injured, and these are 31 people, could not be saved. After the accident, hundreds of thousands of citizens of the USSR were involved in the work to eliminate its consequences, including 200 thousand from Russia. Despite the measures taken to limit the exposure of participants in the work to eliminate the consequences of the accident, a significant part of them were exposed to doses of the order of the maximum allowable 250 mSv in 1986.
Measures for the radiation protection of the population from overexposure were started in Russia immediately after the discovery of radioactive contamination. They consisted in the introduction of various restrictions, the conduct of decontamination work, the implementation of the resettlement of residents. With the clarification of the radiation situation, the area of work was expanded, and the volume of emergency response measures was increased. The main activities at the initial stage were carried out in the so-called zone of strict control, limited by an isoline of 15 Ci / sq. km (about 100 thousand inhabitants of Russia). The zone boundary was chosen based on the dose limit for the first year – 100 mSv. Subsequently, the following restrictions were adopted for annual doses of exposure to the population of 30 mSv - the second year, 25 mSv - the third year. The protective measures taken made it possible to significantly reduce the radiation doses of the population, however, they violated their usual way of life. Changes in society and understanding of the negative effect of numerous life restrictions initiated in 1988-1990 an attempt to move to the recovery phase of the accident based on the determination of the additional dose limit for a lifetime of 350 mSv. There was a heated discussion about this concept in a rapidly changing society, which was then the Soviet Union. In this situation, the Government of the USSR turned to the IAEA with a request to organize an independent examination. The results of the International Chernobyl Project, which confirmed the adequacy of the protective measures taken, could not overcome the emerging trend of aggravation of the problem. Competent organizations (NCRP of the USSR, WHO, IAEA, etc.), which were guided by radiological approaches, could not fully assess the role of socio-psychological and political factors.
In May 2000, the 49th session of the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) took place in Vienna. Considerable attention of this authoritative international organization was paid to the assessment of the medical consequences of Chernobyl. One of the highest SCEAR citation indices was the scientific research carried out by the National Radiation and Epidemiological Registry, established by the Decree of the Government of the Russian Federation on the basis of the Medical Radiological Research Center of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences (Obninsk).
The accident drastically disrupted the normal order of people's lives, and for many of them had tragic consequences. However, the vast majority of the affected population should not live in fear of serious health consequences, because favorable prospects should prevail for the health of the majority of people.
CHERNOBYL and HIROSHIMA
Our thinking is so structured that as soon as some major tragedy occurs, people immediately begin to look for mystical signs that warned unreasonable humanity about the impending catastrophe. But it (humanity) was too blind to listen to these Signs.
The set of primary sources is approved. This is, without fail - the Bible and the centuries of Nostradamus. Everything else is added to taste and invented on the go. I will try to tell you how this is done and give a dozen false predictions and one true one.
On the night of April 25-26, an accident occurs at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Not even an accident - a disaster. The total release of radioactive substances from the reactor is about 50 million curies. In terms of radioactive contamination, this is equivalent to the consequences of the explosions of 500 atomic bombs dropped in 1945 on Hiroshima. In fact, the so-called "dirty bomb" exploded.
And immediately begins the search for predictions. In the first place, of course, comes the Apocalypse:
8:10-11 The third angel sounded, and a great star fell from heaven, burning like a lamp, and fell on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water. The name of this star is "wormwood"; and a third of the waters became wormwood, and many of the people died from the waters, because they became bitter.
Further, with the meaning, it is reported that the plant Chernobyl (Artemísia vulgáris) is an ordinary wormwood. In fact, Chernobyl is not a bitter plant at all. In the Bible, we are talking about a completely different variety of wormwood - Artemísia absínthium. It is it that is considered the most bitter plant of the Russian flora. And it is from it that absinthe and vermouth are made.
Then Nostradamus joins. The following centuria is usually presented:
The tail of a terrible comet will touch the Earth.
People losing hair, skin and eyes
Strive in insane fear from the depths of Borisfen.
Many will wait for the coming of angels from heaven,
And not angels will come, but black clouds.
Then it is told that Borisfen is the ancient Greek name of the Dnieper (this is true), and the last passage of Halley's comet through perihelion was just in February 1986 (and this is true).
But of course it's fake. Michel Nostradamus mentions Borisfen only once. Third century, quatrain 95: More's law will gradually fade away / Then [come] another, much more seductive, / Borisfen will be the first to establish / With [his] talents (gifts) and language a more attractive law.
And in the picture, for example, I clearly see how the insidious West treats the Russian bear: “Maybe our bear should sit quietly, not drive piglets and gilts through the taiga, but eat honey berries. Maybe leave him alone? They won't leave. Because they will always strive to put him on a chain. And as soon as possible - to pull out both teeth and claws.
Of course, not without the Jews. Chernobyl was the center of Hasidism in Polissya. Chernobyl Hasidim survived a terrible pogrom in 1918: “Chernobyl now gives the impression of a city full of lunatics. People roam the streets hungry, skinned, with longing faces, with goggle eyes, and all the time they listen to something ... ”According to eyewitnesses, the synagogue was destroyed by the Bolsheviks, and a public toilet was built in its place. According to legend, Rabbi Borukh of Tver curses Chernobyl after the pogrom.
The excellent book by the Strugatsky brothers "Roadside Picnic" is another source of predictions. There is the Zone, and the death-lamp, and the horror of evacuation ... And in Tarkovsky's film "Stalker" the reason for the emergence of the "Zone" is mentioned - an accident in the fourth bunker.
There were many more "revelations" from charlatans. From Vanga, who allegedly predicted: “black pain” (Chernobyl) is approaching Russia, Belarus and Ukraine to Pavel Globa, who invented the domestic prophet Vasily Nemchin and his “Tagged Bear”
The local folklore could not but arise. Here is a stained-glass window in the cafe "Pripyat" on the embankment. Now in a woman you can see the chiming third angel
Here is the sign on the pavilion "Autodrom" in the amusement park. If you wish, you can see the sign of radiation in it
Here is the famous inscription “Let the atom be a worker, not a soldier” (view from the central square). According to the legend, the letter “a” in the word “Hai” was the first to fall, changing the meaning of the slogan to the opposite - “Fuck the atom will be a worker, not a soldier”
And on the very central square on New Year 1986, a huge Christmas tree fell twice - this was considered an extremely unfavorable Sign.
The central panel in the Energetik Palace of Culture. The face of an atomic scientist is the first to be destroyed
The village of Kopachi was located four kilometers from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. After the accident, it was so heavily polluted that it was decided to liquidate it - to bury it underground.
The village of Zalesye is completely overgrown with forest
A birch tree has grown from the steps of the Beryozka store...
Such "signs" can be generated in industrial quantities. In a bookstore, I found the book "International Terrorism and the CIA" - according to one of the paranoid versions, the Americans set up the accident ...
And now about the serious.
About a real 100% prediction.
It was made on November 30, 1975 by the workers of the Leningrad NPP.
There was the same RBMK reactor and there was also an accident. In the same way, the accident occurred at night, in the same way, one turbogenerator was in operation before this, and the reactor power was at the level of 50% of the nominal one. In the same way, before the accident, the power (due to operator error) dropped to zero, and in the same way they began to raise it immediately after that ...
The accident at the Leningrad NPP led to a powerful release (1.5 million Ci of radioactivity), but all the materials on it were urgently classified, and the nuclear scientists, who were already preparing to start operating exactly the same reactors at the Kursk and Chernobyl NPPs, were not admitted, not that that to participate in the investigation, but even to get acquainted with the materials of the investigation.
