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The death of the Challenger crew and the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant increased the alarm, brutally reminded that people are just getting used to those fantastic powerful forces that they themselves have brought to life, are just learning to put them at the service of progress, Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev said in his speech on Central Television on August 18, 1986.
Such an extremely sober assessment of the peaceful atom was given for the first time in thirty-five years of the development of atomic energy in the USSR. There is no doubt that in these words one can feel the spirit of the times, the wind of purifying truth and restructuring, which has swept the whole of our country with a mighty breath.
And yet, in order to learn from the past, it should be remembered that for three and a half decades, our scientists have repeatedly in print, on radio and television reported something completely opposite to the general public. The peaceful atom was presented to wide circles of the public as almost a panacea for all ills, as the height of true security, environmental cleanliness and reliability. It almost reached the level of veal delight when it came to the safety of nuclear power plants.
“NPPs are the 'cleanest' and safest existing plants! - Academician MA Styrikovich exclaimed in 1980 in the Ogonyok magazine. - Sometimes, however, one hears fears that an explosion may occur at a nuclear power plant … It is simply physically impossible … Nuclear fuel at a nuclear power plant cannot be detonated by any forces - neither earthly, nor heavenly … I think that the creation of serial "earthly stars" will become a reality …"
"Earth stars" have really become a harsh reality, menacingly opposing wildlife and man.
"Nuclear reactors are ordinary furnaces, and the operators who control them are stokers …" - N. M. Sinev, Deputy Chairman of the State Committee for the Use of Atomic Energy of the USSR, popularly explained to the wide reader, thereby placing the nuclear reactor next to an ordinary steam boiler, the atomic operators, on the other hand, are on a par with the stokers rustling coal in the furnace.
It was in every way a comfortable position. Firstly, public opinion calmed down, and secondly, wages at nuclear power plants could be equated to wages at thermal power plants, and in some cases, even lower. Since it is safe and easy, you can pay less. And by the beginning of the eighties, wages at block thermal power plants exceeded the wages of operators at nuclear power plants.
But let us continue cheerfully optimistic evidence of the complete safety of nuclear power plants.
“Waste from nuclear power, potentially very dangerous, is so compact that it can be stored in places isolated from the external environment,” O. D. Kazachkovsky, director of the Physics and Power Engineering Institute, wrote in Pravda on June 25, 1984. Note that when the Chernobyl explosion crashed, there were no such places where the spent nuclear fuel could be unloaded. Over the past decades, a storage facility for spent nuclear fuel (abbreviated ISF) has not been built, and it had to be built next to the emergency unit in conditions of harsh radiation fields, re-irradiating builders and installers.
“We live in the atomic era. NPPs have proven to be convenient and reliable in operation. Nuclear reactors are preparing to take over the heating of cities and towns …”- wrote O. D. Kazachkovsky in the same issue of Pravda, forgetting to say that nuclear heating plants will be built near large cities.
A month later, Academician A. Ye. Sheidlin said in Literaturnaya Gazeta:
Didn't the academician's heart skip a beat when he wrote these lines? After all, it was the fourth power unit that was destined to thunder a nuclear thunder out of the blue of the guaranteed safety of the nuclear power plant …
In another speech, to the correspondent's remark that the expanded construction of a nuclear power plant could alarm the population, the academician replied: “There is a lot of emotion here. Nuclear power plants of our country are completely safe for the population of the surrounding areas. There is simply no cause for concern."
AM Petrosyants, Chairman of the State Committee for the Use of Atomic Energy of the USSR, made a particularly large contribution to the propaganda of NPP safety.
Considering further the question of the scale of development of nuclear power and its place outside the two thousandth year, A. Petrosyants first of all thinks about whether there will be enough reserves of uranium ore, and completely removes the question of the safety of such a wide network of nuclear power plants in the most densely populated regions of the European part of the USSR. “The issue of the most rational use of the wonderful properties of nuclear fuel is the main issue of nuclear power …” - he stressed in the same book. And at the same time, it was not the safety of nuclear power plants, but the rational use of nuclear fuel that worried him first of all. Further, the author continues: “Some skepticism and distrust of nuclear power plants still prevailing are caused by an exaggerated fear of radiation hazard for the plant's maintenance personnel and, most importantly, for the population living in the area of its location …
The operation of nuclear power plants in the USSR and abroad, including in the USA, England, France, Canada, Italy, Japan, the German Democratic Republic and the Federal Republic of Germany, demonstrates the complete safety of their work, subject to the established regimes and necessary rules. Moreover, one can argue which power plants are more harmful to the human body and the environment - nuclear or coal-fired …"
Here A. Petrosyants for some reason kept silent that thermal power plants can operate not only on coal and oil (by the way, these pollution are local in nature and by no means fatal), but also on gaseous fuel, which is produced in the USSR in huge quantities and, as you know, transported to Western Europe. The transfer of thermal stations of the European part of our country to gaseous fuel could completely eliminate the problem of environmental pollution by ash and sulfuric anhydride. However, A. Petrosyants also turned this problem upside down, devoting an entire chapter of his book to the issue of environmental pollution from coal-fired thermal stations, and keeping silent about, of course, the facts of environmental pollution with radioactive emissions from nuclear power plants known to him. This was done not by chance, but in order to lead the reader to an optimistic conclusion: “The above data on the favorable radiation situation in the regions of the Novovoronezh and Beloyarsk nuclear power plants are typical for all nuclear power plants in the Soviet Union. The same favorable radiation environment is typical for nuclear power plants in other countries …”- he concludes, showing corporate solidarity with foreign nuclear companies.
Meanwhile, A. Petrosyants could not fail to know that during the entire period of operation, starting from 1964, the first by-pass unit of the Beloyarsk NPP was constantly failing: uranium fuel assemblies were “goat”, the repair of which was carried out under conditions of strong overexposure of the operating personnel. This radioactive history lasted almost fifteen years without interruption. It is pertinent to say that in 1977, fifty percent of the fuel assemblies of a nuclear reactor were melted at the second, already single-loop, block of the same station. The renovation took about a year. The personnel of the Beloyarsk NPP were quickly over-irradiated, and it was necessary to send people from other nuclear power plants to dirty repair work. He could not help but know that in the city of Melekess, Ulyanovsk region, high-level waste is pumped into deep wells underground, that British nuclear reactors at Windscale, Winfreet and Downry have been dumping radioactive waters into the Irish Sea from the fifties to the present. The list of such facts could be continued, but …
Without making premature conclusions, I will only say that it was A. Petrosyants at a press conference in Moscow on May 6, 1986, commenting on the Chernobyl tragedy, uttered the words that amazed many: "Science requires sacrifice." This must not be forgotten. But let's continue with the evidence.
Naturally, there were obstacles on the way to the development of the new industry. A colleague of IV Kurchatov, Yu. V. Sivintsev, cites in his book “I. V. Kurchatov and Nuclear Power”[2] interesting memories of the period when the ideas of the“peaceful atom”were introduced into the consciousness of the public and the difficulties that had to be faced along the way.
It's time to say that the above optimistic forecasts and assurances of pundits have never been shared by the operators of nuclear power plants, that is, those who dealt with the peaceful atom directly, every day, at their workplace, and not in the cozy silence of offices and laboratories. In those years, information about accidents and malfunctions at nuclear power plants was filtered in every possible way on the ministerial sieve of caution, only what was considered necessary to be published was made public. I remember well the milestone event of those years - the accident at the American Trimile Island nuclear power plant on March 28, 1979, which dealt the first serious blow to the nuclear power industry and dispelled the illusion of nuclear power plant safety among many. However, not all.
At that time, I worked as the head of a department at the Soyuzatomenergo association of the USSR Ministry of Energy, and I remember my and my colleagues' reaction to this sad event.
Having worked before that for many years on the installation, repair and operation of nuclear power plants and knowing for certain the degree of their reliability, which can be formulated briefly: “on the edge”, “in the balance of an accident or disaster,” we said then: “This is what should have been it will happen sooner or later … This can happen in our country too …"
But neither I, nor those who had previously worked in the operation of nuclear power plants, had complete information about this accident. Details of the events in Pennsylvania were given in a "Information Sheet" for official use, circulated to the heads of the main directorates and their deputies. The question is, why was there a secret about an accident known to the whole world? After all, the timely consideration of negative experience is a guarantee of non-repetition of this in the future. But … at that time it was so: negative information - only for top management, and on the lower floors - cut down information. However, even this curtailed information gave rise to sad reflections about the insidiousness of radiation, if, God forbid, it breaks out, about the need to educate the general public in these matters. But in those years it was simply impossible to organize such training. Such a step would contradict the official directive on the complete safety of nuclear power plants.
Then I decided to go it alone and wrote four stories about the life and work of people at nuclear power plants. The stories were called: "Operators", "Expertise", "Power Unit" and "Nuclear Tan". However, in response to my proposal to publish these things in the editorial offices, they answered me: “This cannot be! Academics everywhere write that everything is safe at Soviet nuclear power plants. Academician Kirillin is even going to take a garden plot near the nuclear power plant, but you have written all sorts of things here … In the West, it may be, with us - no!"
The editor-in-chief of a thick magazine, praising the story, even said to me then: “If 'them” had it, then they would publish it.”
Still, one of the stories - "Operators" - was published in 1981. And I am glad that people, having read it, I think, have understood that nuclear energy is a complex and extremely responsible business.
However, the era went on as usual, and we will not rush things. After all, everything that should have happened happened. In scholarly circles, serenity continued to reign. Sober voices about the possible danger of nuclear power plants for the environment were perceived as an encroachment on the authority of science …
In 1974, at the general annual meeting of the USSR Academy of Sciences, Academician A. P. Aleksandrov, in particular, said:
“We are accused that nuclear power is dangerous and fraught with radioactive contamination of the environment … But what about, comrades, if a nuclear war breaks out? What kind of pollution will there be?"
Amazing logic! Is not it?
Ten years later, at the party asset of the USSR Ministry of Energy (a year before Chernobyl), the same A. P. Aleksandrov sadly remarked:
“Still, comrades, God has mercy on us that Pennsylvania did not happen here. Yes Yes…"
A noticeable evolution in the mind of the President of the USSR Academy of Sciences. Of course, ten years is a long time. And A. P. Aleksandrov cannot be denied a premonition of trouble. After all, a lot has happened in the nuclear power industry during this time: there have been serious malfunctions and accidents, capacities have grown unprecedentedly, the excitement of prestige has been exaggerated, but the responsibility of nuclear scientists, one might say, has diminished. And where did she come from, this heightened responsibility, if at the NPP, it turns out, everything is so simple and safe?..
In the same years, approximately, the personnel corps of NPP operators began to change with a sharply increased shortage of nuclear operators. If earlier it was mainly nuclear energy enthusiasts who deeply fell in love with this business went to work there, but now people have poured in even by chance. Of course, in the first place it was not so much money that attracted, but prestige. It seems that a person already has everything, he has earned in another field, but he is not yet an atomic engineer. How many years it has been said: safe! So go ahead! Get out of the way, experts! Make way for the governing atomic pie to your brother-in-law and godfathers! And they pressed the specialists … However, we will return to this later. And now in detail about Pennsylvania, the forerunner of Chernobyl. Here is an excerpt from the American magazine Nukler News on April 6, 1979:
“… On March 28, 1979, early in the morning, there was a major accident at the 880 MW (electrical) reactor unit No. 2 at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant, located twenty kilometers from the city of Harrisburg (Pennsylvania) and owned by the Metropolitan Edison company.”
The US government immediately set about examining all the circumstances of the accident. On March 29, the heads of the Nuclear Energy Regulatory Commission (NRC) were invited to the House of Representatives Subcommittee on Energy and the Environment to participate in reviewing the causes of the accident and developing measures to eliminate its consequences and prevent similar incidents in the future. At the same time, an order was issued for a thorough check of the health of eight reactor blocks at the Okoni, Crystal River, Rancho Seko, Arkansas One and Davis Bess nuclear power plants. The equipment for these units, as well as for the units of the Threemile Island NPP, was manufactured by Babcock & Wilcox. At present (that is, as of April 1979), out of eight units (almost identical in design), only five are in operation, the rest are undergoing preventive maintenance.
Unit No. 2 at the Threemile Island NPP, as it turned out, was not equipped with an additional safety system, although such systems are available at some units of this NPP.
The NRC demanded that all equipment and operating conditions be checked at all reactor units, without exception, manufactured by Babcock and Wilcox. An NRC official responsible for issuing licenses for the construction and operation of nuclear facilities said at a press conference on April 4 that all the country's nuclear power plants would immediately take all necessary safety measures.
The accident had a great public and political resonance. She caused great alarm not only in Pennsylvania, but in many other states as well. The Governor of California has requested that the 913 MW (e) Rancho Seco nuclear power plant, near Sacramento, be shut down until the causes of the Trimile Island nuclear power plant accident are fully clarified and measures are taken to prevent the possibility of such an accident. incidents.
The official position of the US Department of Energy was to calm public opinion. Two days after the accident, Energy Minister Schlesinger said that this happened for the first time during the entire operation of industrial nuclear reactors and that the events at the Threemile Island NPP should be treated objectively, without unnecessary emotions and hasty conclusions. He stressed that the implementation of the nuclear power development program will continue with a view to the early achievement of the United States' energy independence.
According to Schlesinger, the radioactive contamination of the area around the nuclear power plant is "extremely limited" in size and scale, and the population has no reason to worry. Meanwhile, only on March 31 and April 1, out of 200 thousand people living within a radius of 35 kilometers from the station, about 80 thousand left their homes. People refused to believe the representatives of the Metropolitan Edison company, who tried to convince them that nothing terrible had happened. By order of the governor of the state, a plan was drawn up for the urgent evacuation of the entire population of the county. Seven schools were closed in the area where the nuclear power plant is located. The governor ordered the evacuation of all pregnant women and preschool children living within a radius of 8 kilometers from the station, and recommended that people living within a radius of 16 kilometers not go outside. These actions were taken at the direction of the representative of the NRC J. Hendry after a leak of radioactive gases into the atmosphere was discovered. The most critical situation occurred on March 30–31 and April 1, when a huge hydrogen bubble formed in the reactor vessel, which threatened to explode the reactor shell. In this case, the entire surrounding area would be exposed to the strongest radioactive contamination.
In Harrisburg, a branch of the American Society for Nuclear Catastrophe Insurance was urgently created, which by April 3 had paid 200 thousand dollars in insurance compensation.
President Carter visited the power plant on April 1. He appealed to the population with a request to "calmly and accurately" observe all the rules of evacuation, if the need arises.
In his April 5 speech on energy issues, the President elaborated on alternative methods such as solar energy, oil shale processing, coal gasification, etc., but did not mention nuclear energy at all, be it nuclear fission or controlled thermonuclear fusion.
Many senators say that the accident could lead to a "painful reappraisal" of the attitude towards nuclear energy, however, according to them, the country will have to continue to produce electricity at nuclear power plants, since there is no other way out for the United States. The ambivalent position of the senators on this issue clearly testifies to the predicament in which the US government found itself after the accident.
ALARM DESCRIPTION
“The first signs of the accident were discovered at 4 o'clock in the morning, when, for unknown reasons, the main pumps stopped supplying feed water to the steam generator. All three emergency pumps, designed specifically for uninterrupted feed water supply, had already been under repair for two weeks, which was a gross violation of the NPP operating rules.
As a result, the steam generator was left without feed water and could not remove the heat generated by the reactor from the primary circuit. The turbine was automatically shut down due to a violation of the steam parameters. In the first loop of the reactor block, the temperature and pressure of water sharply increased. Through the safety valve of the volume compensator, the mixture of superheated water and steam began to be discharged into a special tank (bubbler). However, after the water pressure in the primary circuit dropped to a normal level (160 atm), the valve did not sit in place, as a result of which the pressure in the bubbler also increased over the allowable one. The emergency membrane on the bubbler collapsed, and about 370 cubic meters of hot radioactive water poured onto the floor of the concrete containment shell of the reactor (into the central hall).
The drainage pumps were automatically turned on and began to pump the accumulated water into the tanks located in the auxiliary building of the nuclear power plant. The personnel had to immediately turn off the drainage pumps so that all radioactive water remained inside the containment, but this was not done.
The auxiliary building of the nuclear power plant had three tanks, but all the radioactive water entered only one of them. The cistern overflowed, and the water flooded the floor in a layer several inches. The water began to evaporate, and radioactive gases, together with the steam, entered the atmosphere through the ventilation pipe of the auxiliary building, which was one of the main reasons for the subsequent radioactive contamination of the area.
At the moment of opening of the safety valve, the emergency protection system of the reactor was triggered with the release of absorber rods, as a result of which the chain reaction stopped and the reactor was practically stopped. The process of fission of uranium nuclei in the fuel rods stopped, but the nuclear fission of the fragments continued with the release of heat in an amount of about 10 percent of the nominal electrical power, or about 250 MW of thermal power.
Since the safety valve remained open, the pressure of the cooling water in the reactor vessel dropped rapidly, and the water rapidly evaporated. The water level in the reactor vessel dropped and the temperature rose rapidly. Apparently, this led to the formation of a steam-water mixture, as a result of which there was a breakdown of the main circulation pumps and they stopped.
As soon as the pressure dropped to 11.2 atm, the emergency core cooling system was automatically triggered, and the fuel assemblies began to cool. This happened two minutes after the start of the accident. (Here the situation is similar to the Chernobyl one 20 seconds before the explosion. But in Chernobyl the emergency cooling system of the core was turned off by the personnel in advance. - G. M.)
For still unclear reasons, the operator turned off the two pumps that activated the emergency cooling system 4.5 minutes after the start of the accident. Obviously, he believed that the entire upper part of the core was under water. Probably, the operator incorrectly read the water pressure inside the primary circuit using the pressure gauge and decided that there was no need for emergency cooling of the core. Meanwhile, the water was still evaporating from the reactor. The safety valve appears to be stuck and the operators were unable to close it using the remote control. Since the valve is located at the top of the volume compensator under the containment, it is practically impossible to manually close or open it by hand.
The valve remained open for so long that the water level in the reactor dropped and one third of the core was left without cooling.
According to experts, shortly before the emergency cooldown system was turned on or shortly after it was turned on, at least twenty thousand fuel rods out of a total of thirty-six thousand (177 fuel assemblies with 208 rods in each) were left without cooling. The protective zirconium shells of the fuel rods began to crack and crumble. Highly active fission products began to emerge from the damaged fuel elements. The primary circuit water became even more radioactive.
When the tops of the fuel rods were exposed, the temperature inside the reactor vessel exceeded 400 degrees and the indicators on the control panel went off scale. The computer that monitored the temperature in the core began to issue solid question marks and issued them over the next eleven hours …
11 minutes after the start of the accident, the operator again turned on the emergency cooling system of the core, which he had previously turned off by mistake.
Over the next 50 minutes, the pressure drop in the reactor stopped, but the temperature continued to rise. The pumps that pumped water for emergency cooling of the core began to vibrate strongly, and the operator turned off all four pumps - two of them after 1 hour 15 minutes, the other two after 1 hour 40 minutes after the start of the accident. Apparently, he feared that the pumps would be damaged.
At 17:30 the main feedwater pump was finally started up again, which was turned off at the very beginning of the accident. The circulation of water in the core resumed. Water again coated the tops of the fuel rods, which were uncooled and destroyed in nearly eleven hours.
On the night of March 28-29, a gas bubble began to form in the upper part of the reactor vessel. The core warmed up to such an extent that, due to the chemical properties of the zirconium shell of the rods, the water molecules split into hydrogen and oxygen. A bubble with a volume of about 30 cubic meters, consisting mainly of hydrogen and radioactive gases - krypton, argon, xenon and others, strongly impeded the circulation of cooling water, since the pressure in the reactor increased significantly. But the main danger was that the mixture of hydrogen and oxygen could explode at any moment. (What happened in Chernobyl. - GM) The force of the explosion would be equivalent to the explosion of three tons of TNT, which would lead to the inevitable destruction of the reactor vessel. Otherwise, a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen could have penetrated from the reactor to the outside and would have accumulated under the dome of the containment shell. If it exploded there, all radioactive fission products would enter the atmosphere (what happened in Chernobyl. - GM). By that time, the radiation level inside the containment had reached 30,000 rem / hour, which was 600 times higher than the lethal dose. In addition, if the bubble continued to increase, it would gradually displace all the cooling water from the reactor vessel, and then the temperature would rise so much that the uranium would melt (which happened in Chernobyl - GM).
On the night of March 30, the volume of the bubble decreased by 20 percent, and on April 2 it was only 1.4 cubic meters. To completely eliminate the bubble and eliminate the danger of an explosion, the technicians used the method of the so-called water degassing. The cooling water circulating in the primary circuit was injected into the volume compensator (by that time the safety valve was closed for some unknown reason). At the same time, hydrogen dissolved in it was released from the water. Then the cooling water again entered the reactor and there absorbed another portion of hydrogen from the gas bubble. As the oxygen dissolved in the water, the bubble volume became smaller and smaller. Outside the containment, there was a device specially delivered to the nuclear power plant - the so-called recombiner for converting hydrogen and oxygen into water.
With the restoration of the feed water supply to the steam generator and the renewal of the circulation of the coolant (cooling water) in the primary loop, normal heat removal from the core began.
As noted earlier, a very high radioactivity with long-lived isotopes was created under the containment, and further operation of the unit would be economically unjustified. According to preliminary data, the elimination of the consequences of the accident will cost forty million dollars (in Chernobyl - eight billion rubles. - GM). The reactor has been shut down for a long time. A commission has been set up to find out the causes of the accident.
Members of the public accuse Metropolitan Edison of rushing to commission Unit 2 on December 30, 25 hours before New Year's, to win $ 40 million in tax payments, although not long before, at the end 1978, malfunctions in the operation of mechanical devices were already noted and the unit had to be stopped several times during the testing phase. However, federal inspectors still allowed its industrial exploitation. In January 1979, the newly commissioned unit was shut down for two weeks after leaks were discovered in pipelines and pumps.
Even after the accident, gross violations of safety rules by Metropolitan Edison continued. So, on Friday March 30, on the third day of the accident, 52,000 cubic meters of radioactive water were dumped into the Sakuahana River. The company did this without first obtaining permission from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, ostensibly to free up containers for more radioactive water being pumped out of the reactor shell by drain pumps …"
Now, having got acquainted with the details of the disaster in Pennsylvania and anticipating Chernobyl, one should take a quick glance at the past 35 years since the early fifties. To trace whether Pennsylvania and Chernobyl were so accidental, did there have been accidents at nuclear power plants in the United States and the USSR over the past thirty-five years, which could serve as a lesson and warn people against a lighter approach to the most complex problem of our time - the development of nuclear energy?
Indeed, have nuclear power plants in both countries worked so successfully over the past years? Not quite, it turns out. Let's look into the history of the development of nuclear power and see that accidents at nuclear reactors began almost immediately after their appearance.
IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
1951 year. Detroit. Research reactor accident. Overheating of the fissionable material as a result of exceeding the permissible temperature. Air pollution with radioactive gases.
June 24, 1959. The melt of a portion of the fuel cells as a result of the failure of the cooling system at an experimental power reactor in Santa Susana, California.
January 3, 1961. Steam explosion at an experimental reactor near Idaho Falls, Idaho. Three were killed.
October 5, 1966. Partial core meltdown as a result of failure of the cooling system at the Enrico Fermi reactor near Detroit.
November 19, 1971. Nearly 200,000 liters of radioactive contaminated water from an overflowing reactor waste storage facility in Montjello, Minnesota, leaked into the Mississippi River.
March 28, 1979. Core meltdown due to loss of reactor cooling at the Threemile Island NPP. Release of radioactive gases into the atmosphere and liquid radioactive waste into the Sakuahana River. Evacuation of the population from the disaster zone.
August 7, 1979. About 1,000 people received a radiation dose six times higher than normal as a result of the release of highly enriched uranium from a nuclear fuel plant near Erving, Tennessee.
January 25, 1982 The rupture of a steam generator pipe at Gene's Reactor, near Rochester, released radioactive steam into the atmosphere.
January 30, 1982 A state of emergency has been declared at a nuclear power plant near Ontario, New York. As a result of the accident in the reactor cooling system, a leak of radioactive substances into the atmosphere occurred.
February 28, 1985. At the NPP Samer-Plant, criticality was reached prematurely, that is, an uncontrolled acceleration took place.
May 19, 1985 At the Indian Point 2 nuclear power plant near New York, owned by Consolidated Edison, there was a radioactive water leak. The accident was caused by a malfunction in a valve and resulted in a leak of several hundred gallons, including outside the nuclear power plant.
1986 year … Webbers Falls. Explosion of a tank with radioactive gas at a uranium enrichment plant. One person died. Eight wounded …
IN SOVIET UNION
September 29, 1957. An accident at a reactor near Chelyabinsk. There was a spontaneous nuclear acceleration of fuel waste with a strong release of radioactivity. A vast territory is contaminated with radiation. The contaminated area was fenced off with barbed wire and ringed with a drainage channel. The population was evacuated, the soil was dug up, the cattle were destroyed and everything was heaped into the mounds.
May 7, 1966. Acceleration on prompt neutrons at a nuclear power plant with a boiling nuclear reactor in the city of Melekess. The dosimetrist and the shift supervisor of the nuclear power plant were irradiated. The reactor was extinguished by dropping two bags of boric acid into it.
1964-1979 years. During 15 years, repeated destruction (burnout) of the core fuel assemblies at the first unit of the Beloyarsk NPP. Core repairs were accompanied by overexposure of the operating personnel.
January 7, 1974 Explosion of a reinforced concrete gasholder for holding radioactive gases at the first unit of the Leningrad NPP. There were no casualties.
February 6, 1974 Rupture of the intermediate circuit at the first unit of the Leningrad NPP as a result of boiling water with subsequent water hammer. Three were killed. Highly active water with filter powder slurry was discharged into the external environment.
October 1975. At the first unit of the Leningrad NPP, partial destruction of the core ("local goat"). The reactor was shut down and in a day it was purged with an emergency flow of nitrogen into the atmosphere through a ventilation pipe. About one and a half million curies of highly active radionuclides were released into the environment.
1977 year. Melting of half of the core fuel assemblies at the second unit of the Beloyarsk NPP. The repair with overexposure of the personnel lasted for about a year.
December 31, 1978. The second unit of the Beloyarsk NPP burned down. The fire arose from the fall of the slab of the turbine hall on the oil tank of the turbine. The entire control cable is burnt out. The reactor was out of control. When organizing the supply of emergency cooling water to the reactor, eight people were overexposed.
October 1982. Explosion of a generator at the first unit of the Armenian NPP. Fire in the cable industry. Loss of power supply for own needs. The operating personnel organized the supply of cooling water to the reactor. Groups of technologists and repairmen arrived from the Kola and other nuclear power plants to provide assistance.
September 1982. Destruction of the central fuel assembly at the first unit of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant due to erroneous actions of the operating personnel. Release of radioactivity into the industrial zone and the city of Pripyat, as well as overexposure of maintenance personnel during the elimination of the "little goat".
June 27, 1985. Accident at the first block of the Balakovo NPP. During the period of commissioning, the safety valve tore out and steam of three hundred degrees began to flow into the room where people worked. 14 people were killed. The accident occurred as a result of extraordinary haste and nervousness due to erroneous actions of inexperienced operational personnel.
All accidents at nuclear power plants in the USSR were not made public, with the exception of accidents at the first units of the Armenian and Chernobyl nuclear power plants in 1982, which were casually mentioned in the front line of Pravda after Yu. V. Andropov was elected General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee.
In addition, an indirect mention of the accident at the first unit of the Leningrad NPP took place in March 1976 at the party asset of the USSR Ministry of Energy, at which the Chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers AN Kosygin spoke. In particular, he said then that the governments of Sweden and Finland had made a request to the Government of the USSR regarding the increase in radioactivity over their countries. Kosygin also said that the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Council of Ministers of the USSR are drawing the attention of power engineers to the particular importance of observing nuclear safety and the quality of nuclear power plants in the USSR.
The situation when accidents at nuclear power plants were hidden from the public became the norm under the Minister of Energy and Electrification of the USSR, P. S. Neporozhny. But accidents were hidden not only from the public and the government, but also from the workers of the country's nuclear power plants, which is especially dangerous, because the lack of publicity of negative experiences is always fraught with unpredictable consequences. Generates carelessness and frivolity.
Naturally, the successor of P. S. Neporozhny as minister, A. I. Six months after his inauguration, he signed an order of the USSR Ministry of Energy dated May 19, 1985 No. 391-ДСП, where in paragraph 64-1 it was prescribed:
Comrade Mayorets laid a dubious moral position in the basis of his activities already in the first months of his work in the new ministry.
It was in such an atmosphere of carefully thought-out "trouble-free" that Comrade Petrosyants wrote his numerous books and, without fear of being exposed, promoted the complete safety of the nuclear power plant …
AI Mayorets acted here within the framework of a long-established system. Having secured himself with the notorious "order", he began to manage the atomic energy …
But after all, it is necessary to manage such an economy as the USSR Ministry of Energy, which penetrated virtually the entire organism of the USSR economy with its ramified power supply network, must be competently, wisely and carefully, that is, morally, mindful of the potential danger of nuclear energy. For Socrates also said: "Everyone is wise in what he knows well."
How could a person who did not know this complicated and dangerous business at all manage nuclear energy? Of course, it is not the gods who burn the pots. But after all, here are not just pots, but nuclear reactors, which, on occasion, themselves can burn great …
But nevertheless, AI Mayorets, rolling up his sleeves, took up this unknown business and with the light hand of the Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR B. Ye. Shcherbina, who had nominated him to this post, began to "burn nuclear pots."
Having become a minister, AI Mayorets first of all liquidated Glavniiproekt in the USSR Ministry of Energy, the chief executive officer in charge of design and research work in the Ministry of Energy, letting this important sector of engineering and scientific activities take its course.
Further, by reducing the repairs of power plant equipment, it increased the installed capacity utilization factor, sharply reducing the reserve of available capacities at the country's power plants.
The frequency in the power system has become more stable, but the risk of a major accident has sharply increased …
Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR B. Ye. Shcherbina from the rostrum of the expanded Collegium of the USSR Ministry of Energy in March 1986 (a month before Chernobyl) considered it possible to celebrate this achievement. Shcherbina himself then headed the fuel and energy sector in the government. His praise for Mayorz is understandable.
Here it is necessary to say briefly about B. Ye. Shcherbin as a person. An experienced administrator, ruthlessly demanding, automatically transferring management methods from the gas industry, where he was a minister for a long time, to the energy sector, tough and insufficiently competent in matters of energy, especially nuclear, this is who became the head of the fuel and energy sector in the government. But this short, puny man's grip was truly dead. In addition, he possessed a truly amazing ability to impose on the NPP builders his own terms for the start-up of power units, which did not prevent him, after a while, to blame them for the failure of the "assumed obligations".
At the same time, Shcherbina imposed the start-up time without taking into account the necessary technological time for the construction of nuclear power plants, installation of equipment and commissioning.
I remember that on February 20, 1986, at a meeting in the Kremlin of NPP directors and heads of nuclear construction projects, a kind of regulation was drawn up. The reporting director or the head of the construction site spoke for no more than two minutes, and B. Ye. Shcherbina, who interrupted them, for at least thirty-five or forty minutes.
The most interesting was the speech of the head of the construction department of the Zaporizhzhya NPP R. G. Henokh, who plucked up courage and in a thick bass (bass at such a meeting was regarded as tactless) said that the 3rd unit of the Zaporizhzhya NPP would be launched at best not earlier than August 1986 (the actual start-up took place on December 30, 1986) due to the late delivery of equipment and the unavailability of the computer complex, the installation of which has just begun.
- We saw what a hero! - Shcherbina was indignant. - He sets his own dates! - And he raised his voice to a shout: - Who gave you the right, comrade Henokh, to set your own terms instead of government ones ?!
- The timing is dictated by the technology of the work, - the head of the construction site was stubborn.
- Drop it! Shcherbina interrupted him. - Do not start cancer for a stone! The government term is May 1986. Let me go in May!
- But only at the end of May the delivery of special fittings will be completed, - Henokh retorted.
- Deliver earlier, - Shcherbina instructed. And he turned to the Mayor who was sitting next to him: - Note, Anatoly Ivanovich, your construction site managers hide behind the lack of equipment and break the deadlines …
- We will stop this, Boris Evdokimovich, - promised Mayorets.
- It is not clear how a nuclear power plant can be built and started up without equipment … After all, the equipment is supplied not by me, but by the industry through the customer … - Henokh muttered and, distressed, sat down.
After the meeting, in the foyer of the Kremlin Palace, he told me:
- This is our whole national tragedy. We lie ourselves and teach our subordinates to lie. A lie, even with a noble purpose, is still a lie. And it will not lead to good …
Let us emphasize that this was said two months before the Chernobyl disaster.
