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Photo credit: chidori@emptytriangle.com
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Each
entry aims to provide an exhaustive, chronological account of what is
known and unknown about the particular episode being discussed. Body
text without formatting is my own narrative explanation of events, meant to
introduce italicized quotations from the various sources. To prevent the
text from becoming entirely bloated and tangential, thematic sub-sections marked with thumbnail images will dive deeper into the details, provide technical
explanations, or 'teach the controversy' of competing claims, theories
and explanations. An expeditious reader is expected to simply skip over
these marked-out sections, consulting them only as needed.
Examples of various content categories:
Quoted Texts:
Yuri Tregub:
БЩУ
дрожал. Но не как при землетрясении. Если посчитать до десяти секунд -
раздавался рокот, частота колебаний падала. А мощность их росла. Затем
прозвучал удар. Киршенбаум крикнул: "Гидроудар в деаэраторах!" Удар этот
был не очень. По сравнению с тем, что было потом. Хотя сильный удар.
Сотрясло БЩУ. И когда СИУТ крикнул, я заметил, что заработала
сигнализация главных предохранительных клапанов. Мелькнуло в уме:
"Восемь клапанов... открытое состояние!" Я отскочил, и в это время
последовал второй удар. Вот это был очень сильный удар. Посыпалась
штукатурка, все здание заходило... свет потух, потом восстановилось
аварийное питание. Я отскочил от места, где стоял, потому что ничего там
не видел. Видел только, что открыты главные предохранительные клапаны.
Открытие одного ГПК - это аварийная ситуация, а восемь ГПК - это уже
было такое... что-то сверхъестественное... Единственное - у нас была
надежда, что это ложный сигнал в результате гидроудара.
Technical Explanations: My
intended audience is made up of readers who are familiar with the
subject and have been exposed to various articles, documentaries or some
of the most popular non-fiction books. Therefore I will not take the time
to explain the basics of how reactors produce electricity, but more
complex topics such as reactivity coefficients and Operating Reactivity
Margin will warrant a concise summary. The lowest level of assumed
knowledge would be viewers of HBO's Chernobyl miniseries, provided they
paid close attention to Legasov's courtroom explanation in Episode Five.
Human Factors: Too often, the most reliable sources relate what happened prior to the accident, while neglecting the why. We don't learn the rationale behind the decisions that were made, and what April 26th looked
like from the perspective of the participants. Conversely, the worst sources make baseless
claims or twist the narrative to supply this very information. In this
category I will attempt to provide the non-hindsight version of the
accident.
Controversies: We know almost everything we need to
know about what happened that night. But blank spots remain, and
sources conflict. In the spirit of full disclosure and academic inquiry, this category will
attempt to inform the reader of competing claims, theories and potentially true explanations for what happened.
Myths/Misinformation: At
other times the sources conflict, but the facts themselves are not ambiguous.
Here the record can simply be corrected, with an eye to combating
well-worn canards that have long sought to scapegoat individuals or
spice up the narrative.
***
Key Sources Cited
Yuri Scherbak, Chernobyl, 1991
This book by
epidemiologist-journalist-statesman Yuri Scherbak contains numerous
interviews with direct participants of the accident, including several
members of the night shift. These interviews were conducted quite soon
after the events themselves, by an author who could not have had enough
knowledge to color the subjects' words with his own agenda. For that
reason this text can be relied on to a greater degree than similar
testimony given to journalists decades after the fact. ISBN:
5-265-01415-2
Nikolai Karpan, Revenge of the Peaceful Atom, 2006
Like
Scherbak, Karpan chased down many of the engineers who were on duty
that night to record their stories. Unlike Scherbak, Karpan was
interviewing his own former colleagues, and as Deputy Chief
Engineer for Science at ChNPP possessed a formidable
knowledge of the accident's technical aspects. Crucially, this book contains transcripts
of the 1987 criminal trial, although it is still unclear how these
texts came to be. ISBN: 9668135210
Razim Davletbaev, The Last Shift, as published in Chernobyl, Happenstance or Inevitability, ed. A. N. Semenova, 1995.
This account by a turbine division supervisor covers almost the entire period in question, addressing both human interactions and technical details.
IAEA, The Chernobyl Accident, Updating of INSAG-1, 1993
Although
not a primary source, the so-called INSAG-7 report is the definitive document describing the technical aspects of the accident. It
provides essential context for the events of 26 April 1986 while often sidestepping the human factors at play. Nikolai Karpan was a
contributing author to Annex I, which is in fact the driving force
behind the report. ISBN 92-0-104692-8
Anatoly Dyatlov, Chernobyl. How it Was, 1995
While it would be foolish to approach this book uncritically, the
memoirs of the Deputy Chief Engineer must be allowed to enter into a
dialog with the other sources. Dyatlov also interviewed his former
colleagues in certain passages, and his accounts are corroborated more
often than not. For what it may be worth, none of his fellow survivors
have sought to debunk this version of events. ISBN 5-93728-006-7
Grigori Medvedev, Chenobyl Notebook, 1987
This is something of an anti-citation, since a more unreliable and dishonest book about Chernobyl has yet to be written. However, many of the myths this site seeks to combat were initially popularized by this book, which is regrettably the most influential English-language source on the accident. Many sources by Western authors have been compromised by citing Medvedev. ASN B00515LT2M
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| Photo credit: chidori@emptytriangle.com |
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