Interview With Chernobyl Engineer

An anonymous reader writes "New Scientist has posted an interview with a former Chernobyl engineer, Alexander Yuvchenko, who was not only there the night of the explosion, but is still alive today to tell about it. A fascinating recollection of some pretty heroic acts."

Comments

Re:Treatment was prompt

[funkdid]

For Engineers the treatment was prompt, for the inhabbitants they pulled an "EPA in NYC after 9/11." They didn't evacuate the area, and assured people that all was well. After a week THEN they evacutaed everyone. I don't think the locals received the same top notch treatment.

Re:Chernobyl...18 Years Later

[Wapiti-eater]

That's cuz it was later shown to all be a hoax.

http://www.boingboing.net/2004/05/26/girl_photoblo gs_cher.html

Google is your friend.

Russian R.B.M.K reactors were badly designed ...

[phoxix]

the sad part is, some of them are still running ...

The following is the Paper everyone will link to. And the following provides some nice diagrams to look at

And just for kicks: Some really freaky pictures. (The second one really gets to people, he is working IN the bloody thing!!)

Sunny Dubey

Re:Chernobly today

[Pirow]

Yup, unfortuantly it's fake.

Welcome Slashdot readers!
Just so's y'all know, you folks are setting serious records for the number of individual users on the server at once (peaking around 1000 right now instead of the typical 80 or 100). Now, on to what you're probably looking for:

Chornobyl "Ghost Town" story is a fabrication TOP <#top>
e-POSHTA subscriber Mary Mycio writes:

I am based in Kyiv and writing a book about Chornobyl for the Joseph Henry Press. Several sources have sent me links to the "Ghost Town" photo essay included in the last e-POSHTA mailing. Though it was full of factual errors, I did find the notion of lone young woman riding her motorcycle through the evacuated Zone of Alienation to be intriguing and asked about it when I visited there two days ago.

I am sorry to report that much of Elena's story is not true. She did not travel around the zone by herself on a motorcycle. Motorcycles are banned in the zone, as is wandering around alone, without an escort from the zone administration. She made one trip there with her husband and a friend. They traveled in a Chornobyl car that picked them up in Kyiv.

She did, however, bring a motorcycle helmet. They organized their trip through a Kyiv travel agency and the administration of the Chornobyl zone (and not her father). They were given the same standard excursion that most Chernobyl tourists receive. When the Web site appeared, Zone Administration personnel were in an uproar over who approved a motorcycle trip in the zone. When it turned out that the motorcycle story was an invention, they were even less pleased about this fantasy Web site.

Because of those problems, Elena and her husband have changed the Web site and the story considerably in the last few days. Earlier versions of the narrative lied more blatantly about Elena taking lone motorcycle trips in the zone. That has been changed to merely suggest that she does so, which is still misleading.

I would not normally bother to correct someone's silly Chornobyl fantasy. Indeed, correcting all the factual errors and falsehoods in "Ghost Town" would consume as much space as the Web site itself. But the motorcycle story was such an outrageous fiction that I thought the readers of e-Poshta should know.

Mary Mycio, J.D.

Legal Program Director
IREX U-Media
Shota Rustaveli St. 38b, No. 16
Kyiv 01023, Ukraine
Tel: (380-44) 220-6374, 228-6147
Fax: 227-7543

Slashdot readers:
You liked the chernobyl motorcycling? Check out this abandoned Aircraft Carrier!

Good Chernobyl Reference

[zymurgy_cat]

For those not versed in things nuclear (and why positive temperature coefficient of reactivity reactors are a BAD IDEA), a good background on the accident and nuclear power in general.

More detailed article also published...

[lxt]

...as those in the UK might realise, the newspaper The Guardian also published today a much longer and more detailed article with Sasha Yuvchenko, another engineer working at Chernobyl at the time who survived the disaster. He too comments on the excellent medical care he recieved. Read it here.

Re:Unpatriotic

[John Courtland]

At least you could smell the dust and leave on your own before it did what... made you cough a bit?

Dust has the potential to be very dangerous. Go breathe in some concrete dust. Do it a lot. I'll bet the people who live in the immediate vicinity who did not take precautions to not breathe the dust will die quite a bit earlier than if they did not.