Soviet Union Anatomy of a Catastrophe

By Michael S. Serrill

Violation of the established order in preparation for the tests . . . violation of the testing program itself and carelessness in control of the reactor installation . . . inadequate understanding on the part of the personnel of the operating processes in a nuclear reactor . . . loss of a sense of danger.

The language was thick and bureaucratic, but there it was in black and white. In an official report to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the Soviet Union admitted that the men and women operating the Chernobyl atomic- power power plant were responsible for the worst nuclear-reactor accident in history. Said Andronik M. Petrosyants, chairman of the Soviet Committee for the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy: "The accident took place as a result of a whole series of gross violations of operating regulations by the workers."

In most other societies, an admission of human error might seem commonplace. But not in the Soviet Union, where for decades official failures have seldom been acknowledged, official sins seldom recognized. Disasters such as plane crashes and earthquakes are like trees falling in the forest when no one is present. No one ever hears the crash.

That is how it was immediately after last April's accident at Chernobyl, in the Ukraine. Only after furious protests and demands for information from Sweden and other Western countries did the Soviets even admit that anything had occurred, and then they limited themselves to terse statements that only increased anxiety over the nature and extent of the mishap. The result, of course, was runaway rumors. In the absence of credible official information, stories began to circulate of 2,000 or more people dead and mass graves dug in the countryside.

The report delivered to the IAEA and outlined at a Soviet press conference in Moscow last week, was one of the more startling examples of a new Soviet openness. Not only does the two-volume, 430- page document assign guilt for the catastrophe but it includes page after page of statistics, charts and drawings explaining the design and operation of Soviet nuclear reactors. The report will serve as a working paper at an IAEA meeting this week to discuss the international implications of the Chernobyl disaster. About 80 nations were slated to send delegations. Participants are expected to approve a new accord in September for the sharing of information about any future nuclear accidents. Said Petrosyants: "The accident at the Chernobyl atomic-power station badly affected Soviet atomic-power engineering, and will undoubtedly have an effect on the world's atomic-power industry as a whole."

While some Westerners found the report's analysis distorted and incomplete, most were impressed by its thoroughness, its spirit of self-criticism and the promptness with which it was prepared. Said Kennedy Maize, a senior analyst at the Washington office of the Union of Concerned Scientists, a group that has been critical of the nuclear-power industry: "I must confess that I think we know more at this stage about Chernobyl than was the case four months after Three Mile Island," the much less serious 1979 nuclear accident near Harrisburg, Pa.

The Chernobyl calamity occurred, ironically, in the course of a safety test. According to the report, workers were trying to determine how long the reactor's turbine generators would continue to operate as a result of inertia in the event of an unforeseen reactor shutdown. To prevent the automatic safety systems from interfering with the experiment, the technicians disconnected them, opening the way for a chain of fatal mishaps. The consequence was an explosion and fire that for more than a week spewed streams of radioactive material into the atmosphere above the Soviet Union and across Eastern and Western Europe.

So far, 31 people who were in or near the plant at the time of the accident have died, and that number only begins to state the extent of the health damage. Using data from the report on the levels of human contamination, American experts conclude that a total of more than 5,000 people are likely to die prematurely from radiation-induced cancer. There will be 10,000 cases of thyroid cancer alone, the experts predict, resulting in 1,500 deaths. Though there is still concern about contamination in other European countries, the information indicates that all the premature deaths will be in the Soviet Union.

The region surrounding the plant will continue to be dangerous for years to come, the report says, with radiation levels as much as 2,500 times normal. Officials at last week's news conference said that 135,000 people have been evacuated from an area of more than 300 sq. mi. around the plant. Previous / estimates were 100,000. The evacuees will eventually be housed in 52 villages, most of them in the Makarov district, west of Kiev. More than 2,000 new homes have been occupied, and 5,000 more are planned. The houses are being donated to the people, and sponsoring agencies, like local farm collectives, are giving them food and clothing. The evacuees were forced to abandon their contaminated belongings when they fled to safety.

Though Chernobyl was a civilian atomic-power facility, Soviet officials used the accident report as a platform for their campaign against the American nuclear-defense program. After first ignoring and then minimizing the mishap, Moscow has tried to establish a link between Chernobyl and atomic weapons. Said the report: "The accident at the Chernobyl nuclear-power plant has again demonstrated the danger of uncontrolled nuclear power and highlighted the destructive consequences to which its military use or damage to peaceful nuclear facilities during military operations could lead." And Petrosyants told the press conference, "The explosion of the smallest nuclear warhead would be equal to three Chernobyls." U.S. officials quickly pointed out that Moscow's attempt to link Chernobyl to the arms race was a predictable effort to divert attention from its own failures.

Indeed, the Soviet account of Chernobyl revealed that the power-plant explosion was a case of incompetence on an astounding scale. According to the report, the group of unnamed technicians who were responsible for the disaster committed six serious blunders. If any one of these mistakes had not been made, Soviet officials claimed, the accident would not have occurred.

The chain of events began April 25, when plant operators began reducing the reactor's power level so that they could run the turbine experiment. In order to have the machinery operate at low power levels, the workers switched off the automatic control system, thus removing emergency restraints designed to prevent the reactor from going out of control. When power dropped too low for the test, technicians took steps to bring it back up. They also removed too many control rods. Thirty rods must be inserted in the reactor's nuclear-fuel assembly at all times in order to regulate the chain reaction, but Soviet workers took out all but six to eight of them. The operators closed off another safety system that would have automatically shut the reactor down when the turbines stopped. This, said one Soviet official, was a violation of the ) "most sacred rule."

At 1:23 a.m. on April 26, the workers began the actual experiment by stopping power to the turbine. Just prior to that, the flow of the water that normally cooled the reactor was reduced and certain safety devices were disengaged. The reactor immediately began to overheat dangerously, but since the emergency cooling system had been shut off some twelve hours earlier, there was no backup. Within seconds, there was a tremendous power surge that caused two explosions, blew the roof off the reactor building and ignited more than 30 fires around the plant. The damaged reactor core and the graphite surrounding it began burning at temperatures as high as 2,800 degreesF. The fire sent a plume of radioactive debris into the upper atmosphere while Soviet fire fighters in helicopters frantically tried to extinguish the blaze by dumping 5,000 tons of boron, lead and other material on the reactor core. They did not succeed in putting out the fire until twelve days after the accident.

While telling their chilling tale of worker incompetence, Soviet officials were careful to defend both the concept of nuclear power and the overall safety of Soviet reactors. Valeri Legasov, first deputy director of the Kurchatov Atomic Energy Institute, insisted that the cause of the accident was human negligence of such extraordinary proportions that a recurrence was improbable. "The sequence of human actions was so unlikely," he said, "that the engineer (who designed the plant and its safety systems) did not include such a scenario in his project." Though Soviet officials are now re- evaluating their nuclear-safety program and considering more remote locations for new plants, the report makes a strong pitch for continued use of nuclear power, calling it "essential" for future energy needs.

Not all Western experts were satisfied with the quality of the information in the Soviet report. Victor Gilinsky, a nuclear consultant based in Bethesda, Md., and a former member of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said he did not find the "technical discussion up to the standard you would expect." Frank Congel, a current staff member at the NRC who is in Vienna this week for the IAEA symposium, generally praised the report but said he intends to pose a lot of questions about Soviet contamination statistics and procedures.

Some Western experts thought the report downplayed the shortcomings of Soviet equipment. "The accident was mainly due to human error, but the | reactor itself is a very old-fashioned type," said Rudolf Schulten, a West German nuclear scientist. "The safety philosophy of this reactor would never be accepted today by any country in the Western world."

Nuclear-power advocates and adversaries alike were pleased by the Soviets' openness, but there the agreement ended. For Don Winston of the pronuclear Atomic Industrial Forum, the report, while "quite frank and quite forthcoming," means little to the U.S., where technology and safety procedures are much better. For Maize, of the Union of Concerned Scientists, the fact that the Soviet plant was "run by the Marx Brothers" does not preclude similar problems in other countries. "It struck me as terrifying that this whole comedy of errors could actually have taken place," he says, adding that it is "not at all inconsistent with what we have seen at U.S. plants."

In Europe reaction to the report was strong, if only because some Europeans are still suffering from the aftereffects of Chernobyl. Sweden was one of the countries most seriously affected, and last week Prime Minister Ingvar Carlsson, who once accepted nuclear power, gave a bitter speech in which he charged that "Chernobyl has spread radioactive iodine and cesium over our fields, forests, marshes and lakes." The accident has cost Sweden at least $144 million in ruined food and threatens the livelihood of 15,000 Lapp nomads who live in central Sweden. The reindeer they raise and the berries and fish they eat have all been seriously contaminated by radiation. Concluded Carlsson: "We must get rid of nuclear power." Sweden plans to phase out its twelve plants before the year 2010.

Concern in other European countries remains high. In France, which has 44 nuclear-power plants, an independent group of scientists, farmers and doctors claim they have found significant levels of radioactive cesium in goat cheese, leeks and other foods. In Britain the Foreign Office is investigating the possibility of bringing international legal action against the Soviets in an effort to recover losses incurred by sheep farmers who were prevented from bringing their animals to slaughter because the sheep had eaten contaminated grass.

The investigation of the accident is completed, but the cleanup effort at Chernobyl continues. In recent weeks it has been slowed to a crawl by a series of technical troubles. The biggest problem is to encase the reactor, which is still emitting dangerous radioactive particles, in a concrete tomb. The Soviets have run short of cement and have had to install a ventilation system to prevent heat buildup, which might cause new fires and explosions. The Communist Party daily Pravda has criticized the slowness of the effort, pointing out that three other nuclear reactors located on the site cannot resume operation until the fourth is sealed. "Life cannot return to normal in the area until the tomb is built," said Pravda.

Workers cleaning up the site are dressed like surgeons, with white gowns, caps and mouth guards. They can spend no more than a few minutes in close proximity to the reactor. Crane and bulldozer operators are protected by lead shielding, while other equipment is operated by remote control. The work is so stressful and dangerous that cleanup crews labor for two weeks and then are given two weeks off at a rest camp called Lesnaya Polyana, which means "clearing in the woods."

Workers are still scooping up hundreds of acres of contaminated topsoil and trees, but the government is reportedly having trouble finding places to bury all the radioactive detritus. Water pollution remains a serious worry. Concrete barriers are being built to prevent contaminated water from streams and reservoirs near Chernobyl from seeping into the Dnieper River, which supplies half the drinking water for the Ukrainian capital of Kiev (pop. 2.4 million), 80 miles south of the reactor site. Bread and milk factories in the city are now getting their water from recently drilled artesian wells.

People evacuated from Chernobyl continue to be under close medical watch, and are subject to periodic examinations for signs of cancer and other radiation-caused illnesses. In addition, anyone who travels within 100 miles of the reactor site is tested for radioactivity.

It will be decades before all the effects of the world's worst nuclear- reactor accident, on both people and the environment, are known. Scientists are not sure of the total damage already done, and even less sure of what problems caused by the disaster will appear years from now. Indeed, Chernobyl is certain to cast a shadow across both the Soviet Union and the whole world for a long time to come.

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With reporting by Nancy Traver/Moscow, with other bureaus