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 began to train specialists worse. 29. OGONEK: But before Chernobyl were there really no "'irregular situations"' at our atomic reactors? The accident during the tests of a reactor in the southern part of the Urals is now common knowledge. They told me that only you, Anatoliy Petrovich, kept your head and instantly inserted the control rods, which saved it from an explosion. General Vannikov, chairman of the scientific and technical council for the uranium project, noted at that time: "'In this minute you earned your wage for all your subsequent life." 30. A.P. Aleksandrov: There was such an incident, near Chelyabinsk... And at nuclear power plants accidents have occurred. However, skilled specialists, who operate the nuclear power plants, always saved them from explosions. 31. At the Kola Plant there was, for example, such an incident, which miraculously did not end tragically. One of the attendants (and at the Kola Plant there are very competent people!) noticed that steam was coming from a pipeline. They shut the plant down. And what of it? A crack was progressing along the welded seam. They cut out this gate valve and sent it for study. It turned out: Production had been completely violated. An iron rod had been placed under the Y-shaped welded seam, while from above, as though they had welded on the metal in conformity with the technology, it was filled up with an electrode. The seam did not have strength. A little longer, and an accident would have been inevitable! I came at that time to the Kola Plant. They shut the plant down. They inspected all the seams and pipes. 32. There turned out to be 12 gate valves with such seams, 12 potential accidents! 33. OGONEK: Where did they make the gate valves? Why did they miss the defective output at the plant? For X-ray inspection immediately reveals such defects. 34. A.P. Aleksandrov: The Chekhov Plant near Moscow made this ill-intentioned defective plant output. They hurried when they made it, they hurried when they accepted it. On the drawing it was even written: "'Exempt from X-ray inspection.'" They never found who wrote this. Evidently, it was very advantageous for the plant to deliver the order more quickly. 35. I and Slavskiy (our Minister of Medium Machine Building) could not leave it at that. We raised the issue in the Council of Ministers, a special investigation took place. At that time they did not punish anyone at the plant, and it is a pity... The gate valves,
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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.