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 now for 15-20 years, as some people propose. This would mean to lose specialists completely, and then to repeat the entire path all over again. As it is, our specialists under the pressure of public opinion are scattering in all directions. 44. The persecution of atomic power engineering, which has begun in the country, greatly disturbs me. An entire sector of science and industry cannot be ostracized. In this respect there is already the negative experience with genetics and cybernetics. Now it is not just not fashionable, but even not safe to say such a thing. And I do not know whether you will publish our conversation. But I have strived all my life to assert only what I am convinced of. I am convinced as before of the necessity of the development of atomic power engineering for the country. I am convinced that in case of the correct approach to it and the observance of all the rules of operation it is safer and ecologically more reliable than thermal power plants, which pollute the air, and hydroelectric power plants, which spoil rivers. 45. When they were starting up a nuclear power plant, I often took there my own children, then grandchildren. I remember that I came with my younger son, a school boy, to the tests of the nuclear-powered vessel Lenin. But it is possible to have an explosion not only at any plant, but also in one's own kitchen... 46. Perhaps, I am exaggerating, but it seems to me that nuclear power plants have now become hostages of someone's political interests. If the pickets near plants are actually worried about the safety of the population living there, and not about their own vanities, how it is possible to contribute to the disruption of the operation of nuclear power plants, to make the attendants nervous, not to let through the employees, who are coming to take the shift, and even to beat them up? In a nervous state attention is distracted, a worked-up person can also make a mistake and not pay attention to a scarcely noticeable deviation in the operation of mechanisms. This, after all, is also clear to a child! How can the champions of ecology and safety not understand the obvious? For in case of an accident the people, whose interests the militant pickets are ostensibly defending, will suffer. Today they are blocking the Khmelnitskiy Nuclear Power Plant, tomorrow they will set to work on the Leningrad Nuclear Power Plant. Well, it is incomprehensible to me, an old man. For the life of me, it is incomprehensible. 47. It is another matter when people demand glasnost and truthful information about the actual state of affairs in atomic power engineering. To tighten up supervision, to make more strict the monitoring of the construction, acceptance, and operation of nuclear power plants--this is understandable. Everyone, and specialists first
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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.