Next Post
----
The explosion is logged as two sharp shocks in the reactor 4 logbook.
In the control room of Reactor 4, there is no 'Core Exploded' light. There is no information at all. Power has been lost. Indicators for the control rods show they've stopped less than a third of the way into the reactor. The indicators have frozen at the moment of explosion. There is no way for the men in control room four to know that the control rods have been torn free of the remnants of the reactor. Naturally, the reactor has to be intact. It's out of control. It has to be recovered to prevent a catastrophe.
This is what the men in room start doing.
The first order from Dyatlov is to start the emergency diesels - to get power to the control room and to the main circulating pumps. He runs to the auxiliary control room to try lower the rods by disconnecting the power to the drive motors to allow them to drop manually - this fails. He then runs to the Unit 03 control room to instruct them to shut down the reactor. Finally, he orders two trainee operators - Aleksandr Kudryavtsev and Viktor Proskuryakov - to the reactor hall to crank the control rods down manually.
The first communication from outside the room is a call from the Turbine Hall. The building's on fire. Naturally, the Fire Brigade are called. Nobody thinks they're being asked to put out an open reactor fire. More reports of damage come in from around the building.
Radiation levels in the control room are high - but manageable. The control room dosimeter reads in Microroentgen per second - one measurement comes it at 800 - another in a different part of the room maxes it out at a 1000. That's high - but in a situation this dangerous it can be worked in. 500 Roentgen over 5 hours will kill 50% of those exposed to it. The control room is nowhere close to that. The values in the control room were believed to be correct. Radiation levels elsewhere in the plant are measured at the same upper limit of 1000uR/s - where in reality they could be far, far higher. Someone, somewhere decides to record this as 3.6R/hr to hide how curiously specific the figure is. A higher ranged meter is locked away in a safe where the ordinary workers can't get at it.
Elsewhere in Unit 04, Aleksandr Yuvchenko is in his office at the time of the explosion. The entire room collapses around him, dust and steam turning the air a mily white. He meets Yuri Tregub from the control room, and sets about making his way to the pump room. On their way they meet Viktor Degtyarenko who has been scalded by steam. Viktor askes them to search for Valery Khodemchuk in the pump room.
Aleksandr enters the pump room to find nothing but rubble and stars. Above him, he can see the blue laser glow from the reactor. It is immediately obvious that something dreadful has happened - far more than a water hammer or hydraulic blast.
They both return to the building, where they meet Valery Perevoschenko, Aleksandr Kudryavtsev and Viktor Proskuryakov. Yuvchenko goes with the three to the reactor hall. A strong man - he agrees to hold the damaged door open while Perevoschenko, Kudryatsev and Proskuryakov enter the reactor hall.
They emerge high in the building - far above where the top of the reactor is supposed to be. There should be a crane beside them, but it has collapsed. Above them should be a roof - but there are only stars.
Below them is the maw of hell itself - graphite in the core burns a hot red beneath the tangled gorgon's hair of broken control rods and fuel channels torn free from the reactor. The spent fuel pools have been filled with graphite thrown from the reactor which is glowing like a demonic barbeque. The radiation levels are unimagineable. The very air around them is glowing blue, molecules of oxygen being torn apart by high energy gamma rays. The same thing is happening to the molecules that make up the DNA in their cells. The smoke they breath is aerosolised carbon and reactor fuel. In the few seconds it takes them to understand what they are looking at, all three receive a lethal dose of radiation.
Yuvchenko, who held the door, would receive radiation burns to his body from the dust on the door. He survives until 2008. Viktor Degtyarenko, Valery Perevoschenko, Aleksandr Kudryatsev and Viktor Proskuryakov will die within a month. Valery Khodemchuk is still entombed beneath the rubble of the pumproom, having never been found.
In the turbine hall, engineers work to keep the fires from causing an even bigger disaster. The turbine is lubricated by tons of flammable oil. The generator is cooled by hydrogen gas. The release of either of these could make a terrible situation far worse. A fire spreading inside the turbine hall could threaten the other three reactors. Reactor debris - broken fuel channels and pieces of hot nuclear fuel, have fallen onto the machinery. A single piece of reactor fuel has lodged on a transformer beside a turbine. It is radiating at at least Ten Thousand Roentgen an hour - a lethal dose in less than a minute.
The turbine workers slog through contaminated water and reactor debris to shut down the turbine. They are lethally irradiated. Viktor Lopatyuk, Vyacheslav Brazhnik, Anatoly Baranov, Aleksandr Lelechenko, Oleksandr Novyk and Kostyantyn H. Perchuk will die within a month.
Firefighters have arrived to tackle the blaze. Some have no idea what they're facing. Others don't expect to survive the night. The air around them tastes of metal, the taste of radiation itself.
They get about doing what they do best - putting the fire out. Firefighters clamber over chunks of reactor and graphite so radioactive they are glowing. They climb the rubblepile that is the pumproom, making their way to the roof of the building above the reactor.
Major Leonid Telyatnikov - head of Chernobyl's own firefighting unit - will survive until 2004 despite climbing to the roof of the building multiple times. He is listed as an official casualty of the disaster nevertheless. Most of those who went onto the roof will die within two weeks. These are Vasily Ignatenko, Viktor Kibenok, Vladimir Pravik, Vladimir Tishura, Nikolai Titenok and Nikolai Vashchuk. The radiation field is so powerful it turns Lieutenant Vladimir Pravik's brown eyes blue
The majority of the firefighters live to tell their story. Including a truck driver who managed to pick up a chunk of irradiated graphite wondering what the fuck it was.
By 5am, the fires are under control.
Only the reactor itself is still burning.
The reactor operators continue to try to save it. Valery Perevoschenko, Aleksandr Kudryatsev and Viktor Proskuryakov return to the control room to report the reactor as being destroyed. Despite the radiation giving them an insidious nuclear tan, and despite them already being in the opening stages of radiation poisoning, they are not believed. Akimov insists the reactor can be saved - they have to be wrong.
Of course they have to be wrong. The alternative is that an open nuclear reactor is spewing hot fission products into the upper atmosphere. The alternative is the radiological sterilisation of the Soviet Union - of a future Europe where life is short and painful and large swathes of the world are left utterly uninhabitable. The consiquences are unimagineable - so unimagineable as to be impossible.
He orders an engineer to manually open the emergency cooling system valves which had been closed prior to the test - this will take hours. He then leads Leonid Toptunov to the ruined feedwaters rooms near to the reactor core. They wade through water contaminated with dust from fuel and shattered graphite, spending hours beneath the core manually opening valves to try and flood water into the reactor they still believe to be intact. This is, in fact, futile. Any water which makes it to the reactor is instantly vapourised.
Ivan Orlov, Leonid Toptunov and Aleksandr Akimov will die within three weeks. Akimov is so irradiated, the skin on his legs detaches like a loose sock while he is in hospital. To his final day, he insists he has made no mistakes.
Dyatlov tours the station perimeter with Tregub, surveying the ruins. It's clear that something catastrophic has happened - far more catastrophic that a burst steam line or an explosion in the de-aerators. Tregub compares what they are witnessing to Hiroshima. Dyatlov admits that not even is his nightmares could he have imagined. The facade that the reactor is intact begins to crack, but it is not yet broken.
Station Director Bryukhanov is in the station civil defense bunker with Chief-Engineer Fomin. They still do not understand that the reactor has been destroyed - despite Perevoschenko, Kudryavtsv and Prokuryakov looking directly into it. Dyatlov and Tregub repoer to the bunker, detailing their findings. Bryukhanov and Fomin need confirmation - the sickened engineers and firefighters apparently not being enought for them.
Dyatlov is overcome by radiation before he can provide it. He will survive until 1995. He lives long enough to write a book explaining his side of events.
Anatoly Sitnikov, Deputy Chief Operational Engineer from the now arriving dasyshift, is ordered to take the measurements
The station's high-range meter frys itself the moment it's turned on. The fire-brigade has a lower-range meter that can still read up to 200R/hr. (In three hours, a lethal dose). Sitnikov and his team use these to measure radiation around the plant. Many of their measurement are somewhere beyond the top of the scale. By 10am, there is only one place left for Sitnikov to measure - the roof of Reactor 4.
He climbs through the building and steps out beneath the ventilation shaft. Around him are fragments of fuel and graphite still steaming. The needle on his meter pegs all the way to the right as he steps towards the ledge. Something awful has happened, but this is his job. Below him should be the roof of Reactor 4.
Instead, he peers down into the still burning core itself. In daylight, the full horror is visible.
The lid is off. The entire graphite stack is burning. The world is facing a catastrophe unlike any other in history. He reports this to his superiors.
Anatoly Sitnikov receives 1500 rads - certain death two times over. He will die on the 30th of May. For the entire time that he can speak, he refuses to blame anyone for what happened.
Sometime after mid-day Bryukhanov reports to Moscow 1000uR/sec as the maximum radiation dose in the vicinity of the plant.
