Documents / FOIA release
This Central Intelligence Agency JPRS report, dated 1 August 1990, translates an OGONEK interview by Vanda Beletskaya with Academician Anatoliy Petrovich Aleksandrov, former president of the USSR Academy of Sciences. Aleksandrov blames the Chernobyl accident on an ill-considered experiment prepared by Donenergo that violated operating instructions. He also describes earlier nuclear plant defects, Legasov's suicide, and his dealings with Beria and Kapitsa. He argues for continued atomic power engineering and a law on nuclear power.
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## UNCLASSIFIED # Concatenated JPRS Reports, 1990 ## Document 6 of 16 lines of the works of Kurchatov, our research. 74. I was transferred with my Leningrad laboratory to the Institute Physical Problems and tried to see to it that no person suffered, no person was dismissed. At the request of Petr Leonidovich we even sent to him at Nikolin Mountain, where he conducted his experiments in a barn, his associate and assistant Filimonov. And when later they reinstated Kapitsa, I returned the institute to him with pleasure. And what is interesting, he included me later in the collective for the Lenin Prize for the works, which were also performed during the period of my directorship and in which I had participated. But I, of course, refused, although Kapitsa himself spoke with me. 75. It would seem that it is a trifle, but I was never able to see to it that they conferred on this institute the name of its founder and director, Academician P.L. Kapitsa, even in our times of perestroyka. When Trapeznikov was the chief of the science department of the Central Committee, I appealed to him many times, and I spoke with Zimyanin, and comparatively recently with Medvedev, but again the result is negative. It is supposedly impossible because the name of Sergey Ivanovich Vavilov has been conferred on the Institute of Physical Problems. We explained: It is possible to confer the name of Vavilov on the Optics Institute, with which he was directly related. ## 76. OGONEK: Did you have occasion to meet Beria? 77. A.P. Aleksandrov: Yes. He was a frightening, disgusting man. We all understood this. The life of each of us depended on him... 78. I remember the following detail. I sent to the Defense Committee the proposal to introduce at one of the plants the method of obtaining deuterium, which had been developed by us at Kapitsa's Institute. But I must say that during the laboratory tests there was an explosion. They invited me to a meeting of a special committee. Beria, of course, ran the meeting. Makhnev (there was such a general, he dealt with the uranium problem) reported to Beria that I was proposing to build a plant for obtaining deuterium. I sat right here (incidentally, next to Beria), but he seemed not to see me, as if I was a nonentity. He asked Makhnev whether, he said, your Aleksandrov knows that the experimental plant had exploded. Makhnev replied that he knows. "'And does he insist that he is not withdrawing his signature?' Makhnev responded that he is not. "'And does he know that if the plant explodes, he will go where Makar drives calves?' 79. I ought to have kept quiet, but I could not contain myself. 'I visualize this,' I said. Only now did he deign to notice me. He turned his head: 'And still you are not removing your signature? Well, take care.' To this day everything with the plant is in order.
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FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. The text was read from the page images by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word. 22 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.