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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# Concatenated JPRS Reports, 1990 ## Document 6 of 16 experiment involved the takeoff of excess heat. When the reactor is shut down, the the turbogenerator owing to inertia turns and provides current, which it is possible to use for the needs of the plant. ## 13. OGONEK: Who devised the experiment? 14. A.P. Aleksandrov: The management of the nuclear power plant commissioned Donenergo, an organization which had never dealt with nuclear power plants, to prepare the plan of the experiment. Dilettantes can be guided by the best intentions, but cause an immense catastrophe, just as happened at Chernobyl. 15. The plant director, without enlisting even the chief engineer of his nuclear power plant, a physicist who understands the gist of the matter, concluded with Donenergo a contract "'on the performance of work.'" The schedule of the experiment was drawn up and sent for consultation and approval to the All-Union Planning, Surveying, and Scientific Research Institute imeni Zhuk. The associates of the institute, who have some experience of working with nuclear plants, did not approve the plan and refused to stamp it. 16. I now often think: If only the All-Union Planning, Surveying, and Scientific Research Institute had notified anyone of us! But, having not approved the plan, they could not even have assumed that all the same they would decide to conduct the experiment. 17. In our former ministry, the Ministry of Medium Machine Building, they also did not know about the experiment. For the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant had been transferred to the Ministry of Power and Electrification. Perhaps, this was the first mistake... 18. It is possible to treat the former Ministry of Medium Machine Building in all sorts of ways and to reproach it with the lack of glasnost and excessive secrecy, but there were there professionals and people disciplined in a military way, who observe instructions precisely, which in our business is extremely important. 19. There is an instruction, which the personnel of any nuclear power plant are obliged to observe. This is a guarantee of its safety. Thus--you will not believe it!--at the very beginning of the schedule of the experiment it is recorded: ''Shut off the emergency reactor cooling system--the SAOR system.' But precisely it switches on the emergency protection system. What is more, all the valves were closed, so that it would be impossible to switch on the protection system. 20. The schedule of the experiment violates on 12 occasions our instruction on the operation of nuclear power plants. You would not
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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.