Chernobyl is scary. Chernobyl is a terrible secret! what's next?!? this applies to absolutely everyone!!! Doctors identified those who received a large dose of radiation by “nuclear tanning”

On April 26, 1986, I turned seven years old. It was Saturday. Friends came to visit us and they gave me a yellow umbrella with a letter pattern. I’ve never had anything like this before, so I was happy and really looking forward to the rain.
The rain happened the next day, April 27. But my mother did not allow me to go under it. And she generally looked scared. That was the first time I heard the heavy word “Chernobyl”.

In those years we lived in a military camp in the small village of Sarata Odessa region. It's a long way from Chernobyl. But still scary. Then cars with liquidators pulled out from our unit in that direction. Another difficult word, the meaning of which I learned much later.

Of our neighbors, who shielded the world from the deadly atom with their bare hands, only a few remain alive today.

There were more of these people in 2006. A week before my birthday, I received an assignment - to talk with the remaining liquidators and collect the most interesting episodes. By that time, I was already working as a journalist and living in Rostov-on-Don.

And so I found my heroes - the head of the anti-shock department of the North Caucasus regiment civil defense Oleg Popov, Hero of Russia Captain II Rank Anatoly Bessonov and sanitary doctor Viktor Zubov. These were completely different people, united by only one thing - Chernobyl.

I'm not sure if they are all alive today. After all, eleven years have passed. But I still have recordings of our conversations. And, from which the blood still runs cold.

Story one. Abnormal summer.

On May 13, 1986, Oleg Viktorovich Popov, head of the anti-shock department of the North Caucasus Civil Defense Regiment, had a birthday. Relatives congratulated us, friends called, even a messenger came. True, instead of a gift he brought a summons - tomorrow morning he had to come to the military registration and enlistment office.

We celebrated quietly, and the next day I went according to the agenda. I didn’t even know where I was being called, so I put on a light shirt and took money to buy milk home. But my milk never arrived. “I returned only at the end of summer,” Oleg Popov told me.

He remembered Chernobyl for its abnormal temperature. During the day, already in May, it was below forty, at night it was so cold that it was impossible to touch a tooth. The liquidators were given canvas suits as protection. Heavy and not breathable. Many could not stand it and fell from heatstroke. But it was necessary to “remove the radiation,” so the suits were removed and disposed of as best they could - with their bare hands.

People started getting sick. The main diagnosis is pneumonia.

Then I had another shock. We were delivered boxes with red crosses - medicines. We opened them, and there, beyond words, was something that had been lying in warehouses for decades. Over time, the bandages disintegrated into threads, the tablets were yellow, and the expiration date on the packaging was barely visible. The same boxes contained gynecological instruments and instruments for measuring growth. And this is all for the liquidators. What to do? How to treat people? The only salvation is the hospital,” recalled Oleg Viktorovich.

The fight went on day and night. And not only with the reactor, but also with the system, and with ourselves.

On the website “Chernobylets of the Don” there is the following information about Popov:

“In a 30-kilometer zone, I worked in my specialty; I had to treat and put back on their feet mostly soldiers and officers of my regiment. There was a lot of work, and Oleg Viktorovich was actually the main person responsible for the health of the regiment personnel. After all, soldiers and officers were called up in a hurry, often without medical examination. Popov O.V. recalls that there were cases of being called up for training camps with peptic ulcers and other diseases. Some even had to be sent to a hospital or hospital. And, of course, it was possible to provide psychological assistance to soldiers and officers, because it is clear that there was no full-time psychologist in the unit. His work in the regiment was appreciated, and from then on he retained the warmest memories of his comrades, of the regiment commander N.I. Kleimenov. and unit officers.
After completing the special training and returning home, Oleg Viktorovich, by profession and work, treated the liquidators of the Chernobyl accident and was always ready to help them in word and deed.
He has government awards: the Order of the Badge of Honor and the Order of Courage.”

Only in May 1986 and only from Rostov region About thirty thousand liquidators came to Chernobyl. Many returned with a load of 200. Many carried a poisonous charge in their blood.

Oleg Popov brought leukemia to the Don. He arrived with tests that would not have accepted him even at the oncology center - 2,800 antibodies in his blood.

But I didn't plan to give up. I decided to live. And he lived - he studied chess, English, I became interested in photography, began to travel, wrote poetry, designed websites. And, of course, he helped his own guys, guys like me, who were sent into this hell,” he said.

I typed the name of Oleg Viktorovich Popov on the Internet. And I was happy to discover that he also lives in Rostov, runs his own website, his photography is recognized with high awards, and his literary creativity many admirers. This year, according to the regional government website, the liquidator was given another award. And in 2006, the head of the anti-shock department of the North Caucasus Civil Defense Regiment, Oleg Popov, was awarded the Order of Courage.
Then he told me that he didn't think he was worth it. high award.

The real heroes are those guys who were at the reactor, erected the sarcophagus with their bare hands, and did the decontamination, so to speak. It was criminal stupidity that claimed thousands of lives. But who thought about it then? Who knew that it was impossible to bury, neutralize, bury radioactive substances by digging up stadiums, washing the roofs and windows of houses?! At that moment there was nothing else...

The second story. Sweet roads of death.

Memories sanitary doctor Viktor Zubov a little different. When they first announced the gathering to eliminate the accident, he joked that they would go to war against tanks with sabers. It turned out that I was not mistaken. That's essentially what happened.
On the morning of June 21, sanitary doctors from the Rostov region left for Pripyat.

At first, to be honest, we did not understand the full scale of the tragedy. We drove up to Pripyat, and there was beauty! Greenery, birds singing, mushrooms in the forests, apparently - not visible. The huts are so neat and clean! And if you didn’t think about the fact that every plant is imbued with death, then – heaven! – Viktor Zubov recalled. “But in the camp where we arrived, I felt fear for the first time - I was told that the doctor, in whose place I was sent, had committed suicide. My nerves went away. Couldn't stand the tension.

Zubov's most vivid memories include sweet roads. Ordinary roads, which were watered with sugar syrup in order to bind the deadly dust under the sweet crust. But it was all in vain. After the first car, the sugar ice burst and poison flew into the faces of the liquidators who were driving behind.

We still didn’t fully understand what we were going to do. And on the spot it turned out that we had few patients. And all seventy doctors came for decontamination,” he explained. – The protective equipment included an apron and a respirator. They worked with shovels. In the evening there is a bathhouse. What they were doing? We washed house windows and helped at nuclear power plants. We slept in rubber tents and ate local food. By that time we already understood everything. But there was no choice, we hoped for the best.

Viktor Zubov stayed in Chernobyl for six months. At home, the doctor realized that now he, a young man, had become a regular client of the clinic and the owner of a bunch of diseases. You’ll get tired of listing the diagnoses.

At the time of our interview (let me remind you, this was 11 years ago) Victor was living on medication. But he carried on well - he played the Beatles on the button accordion, walked with his grandchildren, and made something around the house. I tried to live in such a way that it would not be excruciatingly painful.

To be continued

I have been to many times Chernobyl zone alienation and brought impressions and photographs from there. I can say that from the inside everything looks completely different from how it appears after reading articles or watching videos. Chernobyl is completely different. And every time it’s different.

On the thirtieth anniversary of the worst man-made accident in the history of the Earth, I am publishing a selection of my best photographs about Chernobyl. After this series of materials you will look at Chernobyl with different eyes.

Posts are available by clicking on the title or photo.

A post-retrospective look at the life of a young nuclear power plant worker in 1985. In spring Pripyat, even now, the same atmosphere of the city of youth, spring and hope that was there in the early eighties has been preserved.

Try to see Pripyat exactly like this.

In Pripyat it is now forbidden to enter buildings, but I managed to walk through one abandoned city house. From the material you can find out what typical apartments of Pripyat residents looked like, what was left in them after the work of disinfectors and looters, as well as what the entrance looks like after almost thirty years of the power of nature.

Pripyat has become a symbol of the Chernobyl tragedy; the whole world knows about this city. But at the site of the passage of the nuclear wind there were dozens more small towns and villages, which no one remembers now. The village of Kopachi found itself at the epicenter of a nuclear tragedy and was so contaminated that it was completely destroyed - houses were destroyed by bulldozers and military IMRs and covered with earth.

On the periphery of the village only a building remains kindergarten, where you can still see traces of pre-accident life and childhood in the mid-eighties.

Pripyat sixteen-story buildings are perhaps the most famous residential buildings in the city. There were exactly five such houses in Pripyat. It is now not very safe to enter the sixteen-story buildings with coats of arms that are located on the main square of the city, but it is quite possible to visit the buildings on the Street of Heroes of Stalingrad - I just visited one of them.

The post contains a story about the house, its apartments and views of Pripyat and the Sarcophagus from above.

How and with what did they fight the consequences of a nuclear disaster? What equipment helped people in the fight against radiation pollution, how did they clean the areas adjacent to the Chernobyl nuclear power plant? Most of the “dirty” special equipment of the liquidators has long been buried in special burial grounds, but some can still be seen in a small museum near the city of Chernobyl. This is the story in the post.

Many people do not know this, but the city of Chernobyl now continues to live its very peculiar life - from an ordinary regional town it has turned into a closed city for the life of modern Chernobyl workers. Residential buildings have been turned into dormitories for workers, who live there on a rotational basis for several months, from time to time traveling to " mainland". There is a curfew in the city, almost like in war time.

I managed to get into one of the dormitories of modern disaster liquidators and see how they live. There is a story about all this in the article about Chernobyl apartments.

What does the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant look like now? Is it true that mutant catfish live in the cooling pond?

Is it true. Read about this in the post about a walk around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant :)

The Thirty Kilometer Exclusion Zone around the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant is known not only for cities and villages. There are also amazing military facilities there - for example, the famous ZGRLS "Duga", also known as "Chernobyl-2" - a once top-secret antenna complex designed for long-range monitoring of nuclear missile launches by a "potential enemy".

Usually at the Chernobyl-2 facility only the antennas themselves are shown, since many of the interior spaces of the complex are even now considered secret. I managed to get into several military barracks and also
premises where top-secret equipment was previously located.

This post contains a story about the interior of the military complex - something that will never be shown to you on any excursion.

Much has been said about the explosion at Chernobyl nuclear power plant, there are many legends and rumors about this place, so I decided to pack my things and go to the exclusion zone to see this legend with my own eyes. The main difficulty for me was getting across the border with Ukraine. Relations between our countries are quite tense, so I had to penetrate the territory of a neighboring state with the help of a small amount of bribes.

Arriving in Kyiv, I left my things at the hotel, and I took everything I needed with me and went directly to the “exclusion zone” itself.

I needed to get to the village of Peski, and then get to Chernobyl itself. Upon arrival at the place, they concluded an agreement with me that I would not make any claims if my health deteriorated, this is understandable, the radioactive background in some places is quite high, and if I get into trouble somewhere it will only be my problems.

I found guides quite easily; walking alone through the protected area, albeit bad, is quite dangerous. In total, I paid my guides $200 and we were taken on a tour.

The route for all tourists is the same for everyone; the most non-radioactive paths are chosen, along which you can walk without problems without putting on special protection.

The first thing that catches your eye is, of course, the mysterious echo of the USSR throughout the entire territory. Abandoned houses, sites, cemeteries. An almost original nature, where in the forest you can meet quite ordinary animals, unlike city animals, no one touches these animals and therefore they can reproduce and expand the territory of their habitat without problems.

The first object that we encountered was the Elias Church. Quite a well-preserved building, unlike the rest, the building has remained virtually unchanged. In the 30s they tried to demolish it, but local residents were able to defend the church and now it is considered one of the symbols of the dead city.

Before the accident, the number of residents was at the level of 12-13 thousand people, but now only shift workers and people who settled here on their own live there. Every building, every monument reminds of the consequences of the disaster. A monument was erected in honor of the Ministry of Emergency Situations who eliminated the consequences of the accident; unfortunately, almost all members of the team died from a dose of radiation.

As I said, the entire territory of the 30 km zone is guarded by the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, there is a severe shortage of employees, so not everyone can catch everyone.

There is a river flowing in Pripyat, some “special” citizens even tried to swim in it, but the guide stops them in time, everything here is saturated with radiation. The Chernobyl nuclear power plant released about 50 tons of harmful substances into the air, they polluted environment more than Hiroshima with its atomic explosion.

There, at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, you can see the same fourth block, which is covered with an already rotten sarcophagus. Now a new one will be built on top of the old one, but then it didn’t exist yet and one could see from afar the pipe with the building of the third power unit, which is often captured in photographs.

Walking along the paths, you really want to step away from them and see the city from a different angle, but, alas, you can step into a radioactive spot. In Pripyat itself, after the accident, the city was so polluted that houses had to be demolished and the building had to be leveled to the ground by digging under each individual pit.

We were allowed into some high-rise buildings that could not be demolished due to their size and there we were able to find remains ordinary life Soviet people: certificates of honor, children's toys and other utensils that almost every resident of the USSR had.

26. 04. 2016

Nina Nazarova collected excerpts from books about the accident, its consequences, dead relatives, panic in Kyiv and the trial

Accident

A book by two Izvestia special correspondents, written in hot pursuit, went into print less than a year after the disaster. Reports from Kyiv and the affected area, an educational program about the effects of radiation, cautious comments from doctors and the indispensable conclusion for the Soviet press, “lessons of Chernobyl.”

Duty on fire department The nuclear power plant was on third guard. The whole day the guard spent time in accordance with the usual routine: theoretical classes in the classroom, practical classes under the leadership of Lieutenant Vladimir Pravik at the fifth power unit under construction. Then we played volleyball and watched TV.

Vladimir Prishchepa was on duty on the third guard: “I went to bed at 11 p.m., because later I had to take over as an orderly. At night I heard an explosion, but did not attach any importance to it. After one or two minutes the combat alarm sounded..."

Helicopters decontaminate the buildings of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant after the accident

Ivan Shavrei, who at that moment was on duty near the control room, did not pay much attention to the rapidly developing events in the first seconds:

“The three of us were standing, talking, when suddenly - it seemed to me - a strong burst of steam was heard. We didn’t take it seriously: similar sounds had been heard many times before that day. I was about to leave to rest, when suddenly the alarm went off. They rushed to the shield, and Legun tried to get in touch, but there was no connection... That’s when the explosion occurred. I rushed to the window. The explosion was immediately followed by another explosion. I saw a fireball that soared over the roof of the fourth block..."

(Andrey Illesh, Andrey Pralnikov. Report from Chernobyl. M., 1987.)

Relatives

Novel by Svetlana Alexievich - laureate Nobel Prize in literature 2015 - built in the genre of the history of emotions based on oral evidence ordinary people. All of them, regardless of their occupation and degree of involvement in the disaster, comprehended and experienced the tragedy.

“... We recently got married. They also walked down the street and held hands, even if they were going to the store. Always together. I told him: “I love you.” But I still didn’t know how much I loved him... I couldn’t imagine... We lived in the dormitory of the fire department where he served. On the second floor. And there are three more young families there, all with one kitchen. And below, on the first floor there were cars. Red fire trucks. This was his service. I’m always aware: where is he, what’s wrong with him? In the middle of the night I hear some noise. Screams. She looked out the window. He saw me: “Close the windows and go to bed. There is a fire at the station. I will be right back".

Read also photojournalist and journalist Victoria Ivleva visited the 4th reactor of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant

I didn't see the explosion itself. Only flames. Everything seemed to glow... The whole sky... High flame. Soot. The heat is terrible. And he’s still not there. The soot was because the bitumen was burning; the roof of the station was filled with bitumen. We walked, then I remembered, like walking on tar. They put out the fire, but he crawled. I was getting up. They threw off the burning graphite with their feet... They left without canvas suits, as if they were wearing only shirts, they left. They were not warned, they were called to an ordinary fire...

Four o'clock... Five o'clock... Six... At six he and I were going to go to his parents. Plant potatoes. From the city of Pripyat to the village of Sperizhye, where his parents lived, it is forty kilometers. Sowing, plowing... His favorite jobs... His mother often recalled how she and his father did not want to let him go to the city, they even built a new house. They drafted me into the army. He served in Moscow in the fire brigade and when he returned: only as a fireman! He didn't admit anything else. ( Silent.)

A victim of the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant undergoing treatment in the sixth clinical hospital Ministry of Health of the USSRPhoto: Vladimir Vyatkin/RIA Novosti

Seven o'clock... At seven o'clock they told me that he was in the hospital. I ran, but there was already a ring of police around the hospital and they didn’t let anyone in. Some ambulances stopped by. The policemen shouted: the cars are going wild, don’t come closer. I wasn’t alone, all the wives came running, everyone whose husbands were at the station that night. I rushed to look for my friend, she worked as a doctor in this hospital. I grabbed her by the robe as she got out of the car:

Let me through!

I can not! He's bad. They're all bad.

I hold it:

Just look.

Okay,” he says, “then let’s run.” For fifteen to twenty minutes.

I saw him... All swollen, swollen... His eyes were almost gone...

- We need milk. A lot of milk! - a friend told me. - So that they drink at least three liters.

But he doesn't drink milk.

Now he will drink.

Many doctors, nurses, especially orderlies of this hospital will get sick after some time. They will die. But no one knew this then...

At ten in the morning, operator Shishenok died... He died first... On the first day... We learned that the second one remained under the ruins - Valera Khodemchuk. So they never got him. Concreted. But we didn’t yet know that they were all first.

I ask:

Vasenka, what should I do?

Get out of here! Go away! You will have a child.

I am pregnant. But how can I leave him? Requests:

Go away! Save the child! -

First I have to bring you milk, and then we’ll decide.”

(Svetlana Alexievich. Chernobyl prayer. M., 2013)

Elimination of consequences

Memoirs of a reserve officer who was called up to eliminate the accident and worked for 42 days at the epicenter of the explosion - at the third and fourth reactors. The process of eliminating the consequences is meticulously described - what, how, in what sequence and under what conditions people did, as well as, in the same restrained tone, all the minor meanness of the management: how they skimped on protective equipment and their quality, did not want to pay bonuses to the liquidators and cynically bypassed with awards.

“We were called to be sent to military camps for a period of one hundred and eighty days, departure today at twelve o’clock. To my question, was it possible to warn at least a day in advance, after all, it’s not war time (I had to send my wife and six-month-old child to her parents in the city of Ulyanovka, Kirovograd region. Even to get bread to the store, walk one and a half kilometers over rough terrain - the road is unpaved , ascents, descents, and even a woman in a foreign village cannot cope with a small child), I was given the answer: “Consider that this is wartime - they are taking you to the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.”<…>

The Chernobyl accident. Travel and passage prohibitedPhoto: Igor Kostin/RIA Novosti

We had to work in the premises of the fourth reactor. The task was set to build two walls from bags of cement mortar.<…>We began to measure the radiation level. The dosimeter needle deviated to the right and went off scale. The dosimetrist switched the device to the next scale calibration, at which higher levels of radiation are removed. The arrow continued to deviate to the right. Finally she stopped. We took measurements in several places. At the end, we approached the opposite wall and set up a tripod to measure the opening. The arrow went off scale. We left the room. They counted downstairs average level radiation. It was forty roentgens per hour. We calculated the working time - it was three minutes.

Read also On the eve of the 30th anniversary of Chernobyl, the correspondent of “Such Cases” visited the Chernobyl disaster zone in the Tula region

This is the time spent in the workroom. To run in with a bag of cement, lay it down and run out of the room, about twenty seconds is enough. Consequently, each of us had to appear in the workroom ten times - bring ten bags. In total, for eighty people - eight hundred bags.<…>Using shovels, they quickly put the solution into the bags, tied them up, helped lift them onto their shoulders, and ran upstairs. Supporting the bag on your shoulders right hand, with their left hand they clung to the railing and ran up the steps to overcome the height of about an eight-nine-story building. The flight of stairs here were very long. When I ran upstairs, my heart simply jumped out of my chest. The solution seeped through the bag and flowed all over the body. Having run into the workroom, the bags were laid so that they overlapped each other. This is how bricks are laid when building a house. Having laid the bag, we run downstairs one after another. Those they meet run up, straining with all their might, clinging to the railing. And again everything was repeated.<…>

The respirators were like dirty, wet rags, but we didn’t have any to replace them. We begged for these too for work. Almost everyone took off their respirators because it was impossible to breathe.<…>For the first time in my life I had to learn what a headache was. I asked how the others were feeling. Those who had been there for two, three weeks or more said that by the end of the first week upon arrival at the station, everyone began to experience constant headaches, weakness, and a sore throat. I noticed that when we were driving to the station, and it was already visible, there was always a lack of lubrication in everyone’s eyes. We squinted, our eyes seemed to dry out.”

(Vladimir Gudov. 731 special battalion. M., 2009.)

Volunteers

Internet samizdat with memoirs of liquidators and eyewitnesses of the accident nuclear reactor quite a lot - such stories are collected, for example, on the website people-of-chernobil.ru. The author of the memoir “The Liquidator,” Sergei Belyakov, a chemist by training, went to Chernobyl as a volunteer, spent 23 days there, and later received American citizenship and found work in Singapore.

“In early June, I voluntarily came to the military registration and enlistment office. As a “secret bearer with a degree,” I had a reservation from training camps in Chernobyl. Later, when in 87-88 a problem arose with the personnel of reserve officers, they grabbed everyone indiscriminately, but the 86th was on, the country was still merciful to its settled sons... A young captain on duty at the district military registration and enlistment office, without understanding at first, said, they say , I have nothing to worry about - I am not being drafted and will not be drafted. But when I repeated that I wanted to go of my own free will, he looked at me as if I were crazy and pointed to the office door, where the tired major, pulling out my registration card, said without expression:

Why the hell are you going there, why can’t you stay at home?
There was nothing to cover it with.

A group of specialists is sent to the Chernobyl nuclear power plant area to eliminate the consequences of the accidentPhoto: Boris Prikhodko/RIA Novosti

Just as inexpressively, he said that the summons would arrive by mail, with it you would have to come here again, get an order, travel documents, and - forward.
My card moved into a brand new folder with strings. The job was done.
The days of waiting that followed were filled with a painful search for at least some news about a specific gathering place, about what the “partisans” were doing at the station, about their life... Mother was mainly interested in the latter. However, having once taken a sip from the military “harvest” cauldron, I had no rosy illusions on this score.
But nothing new was reported about the participants in the special gathering either in the press or on TV.”

(Sergei Belyakov. Liquidator. Lib.ru)

Life

“Chernobyl. We are alive while we are remembered” - on the one hand, a collection of late memoirs of liquidators and scientists who worked in Chernobyl, remarkable for their everyday details (researcher Irina Simanovskaya, for example, recalls that right up to 2005 she walked with an umbrella found in a pile of garbage in Pripyat) , and on the other - a photo report: what the zone looked like in the early 2010s.

The announcer, after a short pause, continued: “But you can’t drink alcohol and wine,” again a short pause: “Because they cause intoxication.” The whole dining room drowned in laughter

« We arrived in Kyiv, noted our business trips and went on a passenger boat to Chernobyl. Right there we changed into white overalls, which we took with us from the Kurchatov Institute. Our comrades met us at the pier and took us to the local hospital, to the gynecology department, where the “Kurchatovites” and colleagues from Kyiv Institute nuclear research. That's why we were jokingly called gynecologists. This may be funny, but I settled in prenatal ward number six.

Ukrainian SSR. Accident liquidatorsPhoto: Valery Zufarov/TASS

By the way, there was a funny incident in the dining room. There were always a lot of people there, the radio was always on. And so the announcer gives a lecture about products that help remove radionucleotides from the human body, including, the announcer says: “alcohol-containing products and wine help remove radionucleotides.” There was instant silence in the dining room. Are waiting. What will he say next? The announcer, after a short pause, continued: “But you can’t drink alcohol and wine,” again a short pause: “Because they cause intoxication.” The entire dining room burst into laughter. The cackle was incredible."

(Alexander Kupny. Chernobyl. We are alive while they remember us. Kharkov, 2011)

Radiation reconnaissance

The memoirs of radiation intelligence officer Sergei Mirny are a book in the rare genre of funny and cynical tales about Chernobyl. In particular, the memoir begins with a five-page story about how radiation affects the intestines (hint: as a laxative), and what range emotional experiences the author experienced this.

« The first thing they did in Chernobyl was “radiation reconnaissance” of the territory of the nuclear power plant, settlements, roads. Then, based on this data, settlements with high levels evacuated important roads The signs “High radiation!” were washed down to a tolerable level. where they should have put it (they looked very ridiculous, these signs, inside the zone itself; they would have written “Particularly high radiation!” or something), at the nuclear power plant those places where people accumulate and move around were marked and washed... And they took on other areas , for those works that became urgent at this stage.<…>

... The fence can be stretched this way or that way. “So” it will be shorter, but what levels are there? If they are tall, then maybe stretch it differently - along low levels? Will we spend more poles and barbed wire (to hell with wood and iron!), but at the same time people will receive smaller doses? Or to hell with them, with people, they will send new ones, but now there is not enough wood and thorn? This is how all issues are resolved - at least they should be resolved - in the zone of radioactive contamination.<…>

A car leaving the area Chernobyl disaster, undergoes decontamination at a specially created pointPhoto: Vitaly Ankov/RIA Novosti

I'm not even talking about the villages - for them the level of gamma radiation was then a matter of life and death - in the most literal sense: more than 0.7 milliroentgen per hour - death: the village is evicted; less than 0.7 - well, live for now...<…>

How is this map made? And what does it look like?

Quite ordinary.

A point is plotted on a regular topographic map - the location of the measurement on the ground. And it is written what the level of radiation is at this point...<…>Then points with the same radiation levels are connected and “lines of the same radiation level” are obtained, similar to ordinary contour lines on ordinary maps.”

(Sergey Mirny. Living force. Diary of a liquidator. M., 2010)

Panic in Kyiv

« The thirst for information that was felt here in Kyiv, and, probably, everywhere - the Chernobyl echo, without exaggeration, shook the country - was simply physical.<…>

Uncertainty of the situation... Anxieties - imaginary and real... Nervousness... Well, tell me, how could the same refugees from Kyiv be blamed for creating panic, when, by and large, the tension in the situation was caused not least by us, the journalists. Or rather, those who did not give us real information, who, strictly pointing with a finger, said: “There is absolutely no need for newspapermen to know, say, in detail about the radiation background.”<…>

I especially remember an old woman sitting on a bench under the trees in the courtyard of a five-story building. Her chin was bright yellow - her grandmother drank iodine.

“What are you doing, mother?” - I rushed to her.

Evacuation of the population from the 30-kilometer zone of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Residents of the Kyiv region say goodbye to each other and to their homes, 1986Photo: Marushchenko/RIA Novosti

And she explained to me that she was being treated, that iodine was very useful and completely safe, because she washed it down with... kefir. Grandma handed me a half-empty kefir bottle to convince me. I couldn’t explain anything to her.

On the same day, it turned out that in Kyiv clinics there are no longer radiation patients at all; there are many people in them who suffered from self-medication, including those with a burned esophagus. How much effort was required later by both newspapers and local television in order to dispel at least this absurdity.”

(Andrey Illesh, Andrey Pralnikov. Report from Chernobyl)

City administration of Pripyat

It is customary to criticize the Soviet leadership, both at the local and state levels, in the Chernobyl story: for a slow reaction, unpreparedness, and concealment of information. “Chronicle of the Dead City” is evidence from the other side. Alexander Esaulov was at the time of the accident Deputy Chairman of the Pripyat City Executive Committee - in other words, the mayor of Pripyat - and talks about the stupor, hard work and specifics of managing the evacuated city.

« So many problems arose, they were so atypical, that we simply gave up. We worked in unique, exceptional conditions, in which no city hall in the world has worked: we worked in a city that does not exist, a city that existed only as an administrative unit,

Read also These people from different continents have one thing in common: they were born on the same day as Chernobyl

like a certain number of residential buildings, shops, and sports facilities that suddenly became uninhabited, from which the tart smell of human sweat very soon disappeared, and the deadening smell of abandonment and emptiness entered forever. In exceptional conditions, there were exceptional questions: how to ensure the protection of abandoned apartments, shops and other objects if it is dangerous to be in the zone? How to prevent fires if you can’t turn off the electricity - after all, they didn’t immediately know that the city would be abandoned forever, and there was a lot of food left in the refrigerators, after all, it was before the holidays. In addition, there were a lot of products in stores and warehouses, and it was also unknown what to do with them. What to do if a person became ill and lost consciousness, as was the case with the telephone operator Miskevich, who worked at the communications center, if a paralyzed grandmother was discovered abandoned, and the medical unit had already been completely evacuated? What to do with the proceeds from stores that were open in the morning if the bank does not accept money because it is “dirty”, and, by the way, it is doing absolutely the right thing. How to feed people if the last working cafe “Olympia” was abandoned, since the cooks had not been changed for more than a day, and they are also people, and they have children, and the cafe itself was destroyed and looted completely. There were quite a few people left in Pripyat: the Jupiter plant was still working, fulfilling the monthly plan, then the dismantling of unique equipment was carried out there, which could not be left. Many workers from the station and construction organizations who are taking an active part in the liquidation of the accident remained - they simply have nowhere to live yet.<…>

View of the city of Pripyat in the first days after the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plantPhoto: RIA Novosti

How to refuel cars if coupons and vouchers were left in an area with such high levels that it is unsafe to go there even for a minute, and the gas station attendant came either from Polessky or from Borodyanka, and he will naturally be required to report on the entire uniform - they don’t yet know that we have a real war! »

(Alexander Esaulov. Chernobyl. Chronicle of a Dead City. M., 2006)

Journalists "Truth" in 1987

The reports of a Pravda journalist in 1987 are noteworthy as an uncomplicated example of the shady Soviet newspaper style and boundless faith in the Politburo - as they say, “so bad it’s good.” Nowadays they don't do this anymore.

« Soon we special correspondents“Pravda” - M. Odinets, L. Nazarenko and the author - decided to organize fishing on the Dnieper themselves, taking into account the current situation, on a purely scientific basis. Now we can’t do without scientists and specialists, they won’t believe it, and therefore a candidate has gathered on board the Finval technical sciences V. Pyzhov, senior ichthyologist from the Research Institute of Fisheries O. Toporovsky, inspectors S. Miropolsky, V. Zavorotny and correspondents. Our expedition was headed by Pyotr Ivanovich Yurchenko, a man known in Kyiv as a threat to poachers, of whom, unfortunately, there are still many on the river.

We are armed with the latest technology. Unfortunately, not with fishing rods and spinning rods, but with dosimeters.<…>

We still have a special task - to check whether fishermen, whose season opens in mid-June, can calmly do what they love - fish, sunbathe, swim, in short, relax. What could be more wonderful than fishing on the Dnieper?!

Unfortunately, there are a lot of rumors... Like, “you can’t go into the water,” “the river is poisoned,” “the fish is now radioactive,” “its head and fins must be cut off,” etc., etc.<…>

In 1986, a group of foreign correspondents visited the Makarovsky district of the Kyiv region, to whose settlements residents were evacuated from the area of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. In the photo: foreign journalists observe how radiation monitoring is carried out in open water bodiesPhoto: Alexey Poddubny/TASS

From the first days of the accident, being in its zone, we were able to thoroughly study everything related to radiation, and we understood perfectly well that it was not worth risking our health in vain. We knew that the Ministry of Health of the Ukrainian SSR allowed swimming, and therefore, before going fishing, we gladly swam in the Dnieper. And they swam, had fun, and took photographs for memory, although they did not dare to publish these photographs: it is not customary to show correspondents in this form on the pages of a newspaper...<…>

And now the fish are already laid out on the table standing near the stern of the ship. And Toporovsky begins to perform sacred acts over them with his instruments. Dosimetric studies show that there are no traces of increased radiation either in the gills or in the insides of pike, catfish, pike perch, tench, crucian carp, or in their fins or tail.

“But this is only part of the operation,” says district fish inspector S. Miropolsky, who took an active part in fish dosimetry, cheerfully. “Now they need to be boiled, fried and eaten.”

And now the appetizing aroma of fish soup is wafting from the galley. We eat two or three bowls at a time, but we can’t stop. Fried pike perch, crucian carp, tench are also good...

I don’t want to leave the island, but I have to - in the evening we agreed to meet in Chernobyl. We return to Kyiv... And a few days later we talk with Yu. A. Israel, Chairman of the USSR State Committee for Hydrometeorology and Environmental Control.

“We were also tormented with questions: is it possible to swim? To fish? It’s possible and necessary!.. And it’s a shame that you report about your fishing trip after it, and not in advance - I would definitely go with you! »

(Vladimir Gubarev. Glow over Pripyat. Notes of a journalist. M., 1987)

Trial of the Chernobyl NPP management

In July 1987, a trial took place - six members of the management of the nuclear power plant were brought to justice (the hearings were held in semi-closed mode, the materials were partially posted on pripyat-city.ru). Anatoly Dyatlov is the deputy chief engineer of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, on the one hand, he was injured in the accident - due to radiation he developed radiation sickness, and on the other hand, he was found guilty and sentenced to ten years in prison. In his memoirs, he talks about what the Chernobyl tragedy looked like for him.

« The court is like a court. Ordinary, Soviet. Everything was predetermined in advance. After two meetings in June 1986 of the Interdepartmental Scientific and Technical Council, chaired by Academician A.P. Aleksandrov, where workers of the Ministry of Medium Engineering, the authors of the reactor project, dominated, an unambiguous version was announced about the guilt of the operating personnel. Other considerations, and they existed even then, were discarded as unnecessary.<…>

Here, by the way, mention the article. I was convicted under Article 220 of the Criminal Code of the Ukrainian SSR for improper operation of explosive enterprises. Nuclear power plants do not appear on the list of explosive enterprises in the USSR. A forensic technical expert commission retroactively classified the nuclear power plant as a potentially explosive facility. This was enough for the court to apply the article. This is not the place to dismantle whether nuclear power plants are explosive or not; it is clearly illegal to retroactively establish and apply an article of the Criminal Code. Who will tell the Supreme Court? There was someone, and he acted on their orders. Anything will be explosive if design rules are not followed.

And then, what does potentially explosive mean? Soviet televisions regularly explode, killing several dozen people every year. Where should we take them? Who is guilty?

Defendants in the case of the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant (from left to right): Chernobyl NPP director Viktor Bryukhanov, deputy chief engineer Anatoly Dyatlov, chief engineer Nikolai Fomin during the trialPhoto: Igor Kostin/RIA Novosti

The stumbling block for the Soviet court would be a lawsuit for the death of television viewers. After all, even if you wanted to, you couldn’t blame TV viewers for sitting in front of the TV without helmets or bulletproof vests. Blame the company? State? Does this mean the state is to blame? Soviet? The court will not tolerate such a perversion of principles. A person is guilty before the state - yes. And if not, then no one. For seven decades, our courts have only turned the screw in one direction. How many recent years There is a conversation about independence, the independence of the courts, serving the law and only the law.

The Chernobyl accident is, without exaggeration, the largest such disaster in human history. Almost everyone knows the approximate history of this terrible event:

On the night of April 25-26, 1986, an explosion occurred at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, which was put into operation in 1977, a few kilometers from Pripyat, destroying the reactor of the fourth power unit.

The Chernobyl accident claimed great amount lives, and its consequences were terrible not only for Ukraine, but for almost the entire world. All of you have probably heard about some interesting facts related to this. At a minimum, there are terrible mutants in the exclusion zone, and it’s even worse right next to power unit 4. But most of these stories are nothing more than legends that are written for the sake of clickability of the material.

Very soon there will be an anniversary of the Chernobyl accident. Of course, it would be impossible to call this some kind of holiday or a solemn event. But, despite this, we decided to look into all the interesting facts that we were able to find and write for you the most plausible ones, but this does not make them any less terrible.

Chernobyl disaster: interesting facts

Let's try to understand a little the chronology of all events. At a minimum, we will not start with the consequences of the Chernobyl accident, but will find out interesting facts that were inspired by the disaster itself. And it turns out there are a lot of them.

Firstly: even before the accident, the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, which was being built at an accelerated pace, raised many questions among safety engineers.

And now a little more specifically. The Chernobyl nuclear power plant, like most similar structures during the USSR, was built very quickly and then worked “to wear and tear.” Vladimir Vyatrovich was the director of the archive of the Security Service of Ukraine during the work of the AS. He said that already two years after the launch of one power unit, the KGB began to receive complaints (for a second, this is 7 years before the accident).

“In certain areas of the structure of the second block of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, facts of abandonment of projects and violations of the technology of construction and installation work, which can lead to accidents and accidents," Vyatrovich quoted a KGB report dated January 17, 1979.

In 2006, data from the archives of the SBU, which during the USSR was inaccessible even to many officials, was declassified. It said that over the last two years of operation of the station, due to poor-quality installation work, non-compliance with safety measures during construction, violations of technological discipline, and radiation safety rules, five accidents and 63 equipment failures occurred at the station. The fact is not interesting, but terrible - the last such message was dated April 25, 1986.

As we see, the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant could not only have been foreseen, but also prevented.

Chernobyl disaster: how it happened

1:23 On April 26, 1986, the first explosion occurred. This happened during an experiment to study the possibility of using the inertia of a turbogenerator rotor to generate any amount of electricity in the event that the reactor suddenly stops in the future.

To carry out this experiment, a power of 700 MW was needed, but before it began, its level dropped to 30 MW. The operator tried to restore power and began the experiment at 1:23:04 at a lower than planned rate of 200 MW. A few seconds later, the reactor's power began to increase and at 1:23:40 the operator pressed the emergency protection button.

After this button was pressed, two more explosions occurred, which almost completely destroyed the entire power unit.

It was the operators who were at the control panel at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant at that time who were found guilty of this disaster and were later convicted. Anatoly Dyatlov was one of them. According to him, the engineers followed all the instructions that were specified in the safety rules.

Only 20 years later all the operators were acquitted. The report they made at the time said: that most of the operators’ actions, which the Soviet authorities had previously called violations, were in fact consistent with the rules adopted at that time.

Chernobyl disaster: amount of radiation

It is safe to say that not everyone knows how terrible the consequences of the Chernobyl accident were. 50 million curies - this is exactly the amount of radiation that then entered the atmosphere. To understand the scale of this, here's a quick comparison:

This amount is equal to the consequences of the explosion 500 atomic bombs, which the Americans dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.

Chernobyl disaster: heroes

Of course, as in any other similar case, this story also has its heroes. These are the firefighters who received the largest dose of radiation. There were more than 100 of them. According to publicly available data, 31 of them died in a very short time.

Firefighters worked until May 9. Interesting fact that from helicopters they extinguished the flames with sand and clay. And it is likely that this only fueled the radioactive flames.

And the affected area, which formed immediately after the accident, stretched over 50 thousand square kilometers - 12 regions. 150 thousand square kilometers around the station became uninhabitable.

Chernobyl disaster: victims

It is impossible to calculate the exact number of victims from such a disaster. Among the figures that can shed at least a little light on these terrible statistics are the following:

250 thousand people were evacuated
134 people who were present in the block at the time of the accident received radiation sickness
28 of them died within a month
2 people died directly from the explosion
According to various sources, the number of victims from the Chernobyl accident can reach 100 thousand people.

Is it possible for Chernobyl to happen again?

It is worth noting that in the territory former USSR There are quite a few nuclear power plants in operation that are built like the Chernobyl one. Only in Russia there are more than 10 of them. But after the Chernobyl accident, a number of changes were made to all such stations, which exclude such a development of events.

Chernobyl now: what is happening in the exclusion zone

Over the past few years, Chernobyl has become quite a popular destination for tourists. Look at the ghost town of Pripyat, walk through abandoned houses, admire the incredible nature and the like. Yes, all this is quite possible there now.

But go to the sarcophagus and look at the huge amount military equipment, which remained prohibited there. And not only by law, but also by common sense. After all, the amount of radiation there is still at a level dangerous for humans.