A constellation of warning lamps flashed red and yellow across the consoles of the turbine, reactor, and pump desks, and electric alarm buzzers honked incessantly. The gray LED numbers on the reactimeter—showing activity in the core—fluttered up and down. Made of steel and filled with concrete, the door weighed several tonnes, but the crank mechanism used to hold it open had been damaged in the explosion. “Help Khodemchuk. For years after the disaster, the Chernobyl power complex still produced electricity for Ukraine. On his way out, the young lieutenant snatched the half-empty bottle of Sovietskoe shampanskoye from the kitchen table. The poor firemen who had first battled the flames on the night of the explosion were dying of radiation syndrome one by one. He groped along his desk for the telephone connecting him with Control Room Four, but the line was dead. The reactor exploded at 1:23 a.m. and spewed eight tons of radioactive debris into the atmosphere. Head up to the reactor hall, he told them, and force the control rods into the core by hand. The two men obeyed, but almost as soon as they had left the room, Dyatlov realized his mistake: if the rods wouldn’t fall under their own weight, they would also be impossible to move manually. After witnessing the horror of the destruction of Unit Four from the outside, Alexander Yuvchenko and Yuri Tregub ran back into the plant to report what they had seen. Every man was needed at once. The apparatchiks had many difficult questions. The core overheated, causing a chain reaction of explosions that released huge amounts of radiation into the atmosphere. The Chernobyl nuclear power station in present-day Ukraine consisted of four 1,000-megawatt reactors, plus two additional reactors that were under construction. By two in the morning, the men of seventeen other fire brigades from all over the Kiev region were racing to the plant, accompanied by search-and-rescue teams, special ladder crews, and tanker trucks. (Serhiy Korovayniy, RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service). Tregub had been sent from Control Room Number Four to manually turn on the taps of the emergency high-pressure coolant system and flood the reactor core with water. The roof was blown off, but there … Chernobyl Turbine Hall Layout 2. Jul 15, 2019 - The Chernobyl accident is considered the worst nuclear disaster in history. Chernobyl NPP Fire Department in 2020 [edit | edit source] The extent of the damage was comparatively minor and no one was killed during the accident. He braced his shoulder against the door, using all his strength to keep it from closing, while his three colleagues stepped over the threshold. A crane in turbine hall of Unit 4. The roof was blown off but there was no leak. Sergey Krivtsun, a 30-year veteran turbine operator at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, was working in Unit 1 in 1986. Its yellow beam caught the outlines of the gigantic steel disc of Elena tilted in the air, balanced on the edges of the reactor vault; the hundreds of narrow steam tubes that ran through it had been shorn away in ragged clumps, like the hair of a mutilated doll. So Yuvchenko agreed to stay outside. LEONID TOPTUNOV, 25, blond, thin, terrified. Zakharov had watched the reactor being constructed from the inside out and knew exactly what they were. Something was still going on in there, but Dyatlov and the technicians around him no longer had any means of controlling it. Panels inside Unit 4 control room. DAVIES: So Chernobyl was a huge complex. Beside him in bed, his wife stirred and looked up as the light snapped on. Igor Kostin/Sygma via Getty Images Few people know that there was a second Chernobyl explosion on Oct. 11, 1991, in the turbine hall of reactor two. Inside the control room of Chernobyl's Unit 4. Up in the Unit Four control room, everyone was talking at once, as Deputy Chief Engineer Anatoly Dyatlov struggled to understand what the instruments were saying. Knowing this task would require at least two men, Yuvchenko told the injured pump operator where to go to get help and accompanied Tregub toward the coolant tanks. Some of the roof had caved in, and heavy pieces of debris—hurled out of the reactor building and onto the roof of the hall by the explosion—were still falling from above. Soon afterward, the chief of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in Kiev established a crisis center dedicated to the emergency and called for updates from the scene every forty minutes. The director, expected to provide answers, had none. Their walkie-talkies weren’t working. The Chernobyl disaster was a nuclear accident that occurred on 26 April 1986, at the … It was Radchenko, a driver from the station house. Yet at his desk by the door, Brukhanov seemed stunned: his formerly laconic manner sagged into a dejected stupor, his movements slow and numbed by shock. Copyright © 2019 by Adam Higginbotham. A nuclear reactor is like a giant steam engine. Wiring inside the turbine hall. He drained it to the dregs. Designed as a refuge for the staff in the event of a nuclear attack, the hardened bunker contained a crisis center with desks and telephones for each of the plant’s department heads, decontamination showers, an infirmary for the injured, air filters to scrub poison gas and radionuclides from the atmosphere, a diesel generator, and tanks of fresh water intended to support 1,500 people for a minimum of three days—all sealed behind a steel airlock door. “But it’s not clear what happened. Pravik told Zakharov to stay by the radio and await instructions. Yuvchenko gathered a stretcher and ran downstairs toward mark +10, but before he could reach the control room, he was stopped by a dazed figure, his clothes blackened, his face bloody and unrecognizable. Thousands of plant operators continued going to work, only to see a turbine hall fire prompt the closure of Unit 2 in 1991. 1 year ago. The roof was blown off but there was no leak. “If we survive until the morning, we’ll live forever.”. Orders were orders—and besides, Yuvchenko was the only one with a flashlight. “There’s nothing to see here,” he said. They were staring into empty space; the bowels of the benighted station were lit by moonlight. This was the power plant's first reactor, which went online in 1977. Heading into the main administrative building, the director ordered the plant’s chief of civil defense to open up the emergency bunker in the basement below. “I’m all right,” he said. But before they could reach the control room, they were stopped by Yuvchenko’s immediate boss, Valery Perevozchenko, the supervisor of the reactor section on their shift. “Tolik, what is it?” one of the men asked. A dust-covered control panel in Chernobyl's Unit 4. The turbine hall. In addition to the turbogenerators, the turbine hall also contains condensate and feedwater machinery, some of which may be seen in the photos in the gallery here. All vehicles entering and leaving the 30km exclusion zone were meticulously cleaned and measured for radioactive particles. Soon afterward, the director took the first damage reports from the head of plant radiation safety and the chief shift supervisor: there had been an explosion in Unit Four, but they were attempting to supply cooling water to it. “Lads,” he said, “we’ve got to get water into the reactor.”. By the time Pravik and Shavrey returned to their men outside Unit Three, the firefighters of the Pripyat city brigade had arrived. Ahead of the big move, RFE/RL was granted exclusive access to Chernobyl for a rare glimpse inside the crippled Soviet nuclear power plant. The door slammed shut. 4 light water graphite moderated reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant near the now-abandoned town of Pripyat, in northern Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, Soviet Union, approximately 104 km (65 mi) north of Kiev. The fallout from the incident (both literally and figuratively) continues to be felt around the globe. Viktor put down the receiver, dressed in a trance, and slipped out into the night without saying another word. Debris inside Unit 4 turbine hall. Listen to his conversation on Science Friday here. He saw the jagged outline of Unit Four, lit from within by a dim red glow, and knew that the worst had happened. And at Senior Reactor Control Engineer Toptunov’s control panel, the needles on the dials of the Selsyn gauges were stuck at the four-meter mark, showing the control rods had stopped dead not even halfway through their descent. Science Friday® is produced by the Science Friday Initiative, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Calls from the station in the middle of the night were not unusual, so she felt no need to be alarmed. “Let’s go.”. Anatoly Zakharov jumped down from his cab and looked around. “And then we’ll put it out,” Pravik said. Technicians were testing the backup cooling system on April 26, 1986, when they noticed something had gone horribly wrong. As the UAZ yawed into the sharp lefthand bend on Lesi Ukrainki Street, Khmel held tight to the bottle. Probing the humid blackness with a flashlight, Yuvchenko came upon a second operator on the other side of a pile of wreckage: still able to stand but filthy, wet, and grotesquely scalded by escaping steam. He and squad commander Leonid Shavrey would conduct a reconnaissance to establish the source of the fire. RBMK units were intended to be operated in pairs, with certain ancillary equipment shared by paired units. A pump in the turbine hall of Chernobyl's Unit 4. You and Toptunov--you morons blew the tank. The other three reactors at Chernobyl continued to operate after the disaster because there were not enough other power plants in Ukraine to meet energy demands. Broken glass, concrete, and pieces of metal lay everywhere; a few dazed operators ran here and there through the smoke that rose from the rubble; the walls of the building trembled, and from somewhere above came the roar of escaping steam. There was no reply. The gigantic steel water tanks had been torn apart like wet cardboard, and above the wreckage, where the walls and ceiling of the hall should have been, they could see only stars. 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