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apparatchiks.
rapprochement
But he also sounded a warning: “We must hope that this will also promote greater attention to the reliability and safety of atomic energy generation at our Chernobyl station in particular. That is most urgent for us.” The interview with Briukhanov appeared in the newspaper without that warning.
Holodomor,
“And at first there would be jitters because of strict insistence on fulfillment of a timetable that was incapable of fulfillment from the moment of its creation,”
surzhyk—a mixture of Russian and Ukrainian—emerging
Whereas VVER reactors required enriched uranium, RBMK reactors were designed to run on almost natural uranium-238, with an enrichment level of a mere 2 to 3 percent of uranium-235.
The designers argued that the RBMKs were so safe that costs could be reduced even more by building them without the concrete structure that could contain radiation in the event of a reactor failure. Thus Chernobyl got the reactors but not the containment.
Viktor Briukhanov
Nikolai Fomin.
Altogether the leaks amounted to about 50 cubic meters (1,765 cubic feet) of radioactive water per hour coming from the drainage channels and air vents.
the waste, amounting to 1.5 million curies of radionuclides, was released into the environment through the exhaust pipe.
For Yurii Trehub, it was at first “as if a Volga [automobile] proceeding at full speed had started to brake and began to skid.
a mushroom cloud of smoke
kersey
the company bus to the plant.
There was still a company bus running TO the plant, TWO HOURS AFTER THE EXPLOSION?
but had gotten close enough to the damaged reactor for that trip to cost them their lives.
Trehub remembered telling his boss: “This is Hiroshima!”
The radioactive shower would cost him his life.
Sitnikov could see graphite blocks and fragments of red-hot fuel rods lying around. He climbed up to the roof of the reactor hall and looked into the exploded reactor. It was a glance that would cost him his health and his life.
He would die on May 11, the same day as Lieutenant Pravyk. Toptunov would pass away three days later.
that were emitting ionizing radiation, displacing electrons in human DNA and disrupting its functioning, had very short half-life periods and were about to dissipate without causing any harm. It turned out that the radioactive cloud caused by the explosion had “missed” the city
“Academician Aleksandrov said, for example, that an RBMK reactor could be installed even on Red Square, since it was no more dangerous than a samovar.”
presentiment
Sparks and white flashes in the film frames reveal the true meaning of what we see on the screen: these are scars left by radioactive particles attacking the film through the thick lenses of the camera.
With the evacuation of Prypiat and its nearby villages complete, the buses returned to Kyiv. They were assigned to their regular routes, where they spread high levels of radiation around a city of 2 million people.36
Legasov was a chemist,
a black mushroom of fuel and graphite dust and ash (exactly like the mushroom of an atomic explosion, but miniature and very black)
This is an incorrect analogy.
Ginna
tendentious
plenipotentiaries
He remembered Ligachev saying, “Well, it’s certainly a great misfortune, but we’ll learn from your experience.” “Those words simply finished me,” recalled Synko. “So the point of the whole disaster was to let the USSR learn from our misfortune?”
The Chernobyl disaster was slowly driving a wedge between party officials in Ukraine and their bosses in Moscow.
supplication.
Liash ko.
Typo.
hydrogen
Almost certainly nitrogen, not hydrogen, since the liquid hydrogen would turn to gas, which would be madness, so close to the burning reactor.
Briukhanov estimated that it was about 50 meters long and 20 meters wide.
This seems absurdly large. Does it mean 5m x 2m?
myelocytes
versts
only 10 percent of the children
Surely, even this proportion is high?
samizdat
caucus
temporized
trope
Zaporizhia
