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

Quite a few

[LordHatrus]

I know quite a few in the Cherynobe area who survived just fine. I even have some messed up film, somewhere :) Still sounds scary though.

Re:Quite a few

[Maestro4k]

• I know quite a few in the Cherynobe area who survived just fine. I even have some messed up film, somewhere :) Still sounds scary though.

Umm, yeah that's true but this guy was working at the plant the night it exploded and even saw the interior of what was left of the pile at one point. (Which is amazing to read about.) Most of those there that night died, in fact at one point he tells he went with 3 other guys who were ordered to manually lower the rods. He propped the door open for them to go in and see for themselves almost nothing was left. The three guys who went through the door all died very soon afterwards but he's still here. (He credits the door and wall for saving his life.)

You really should read this interview, it's both fascinating and scary as hell at the same time. I don't think I'll forget his description of the light from the ionized air above the reactor for a long time.

Treatment was prompt

[freedom_india]

How did they treat you? It was a very intensive and demanding treatment and you had to be very strong to withstand it. I had continuous blood and plasma transfusions. For a few months I lived on other people's blood. Then the ulcers from the radiation burns started to appear. I had a lot of burns. Only after a couple of months did it become clear that there was a chance I might live. For those of you who make fun of the Soviet system wen you probably wheren't even born then, this is a lesson: Soviets took care of their people well and their medicine was top.

Re:Treatment was prompt

[HardCase]

For those of you who make fun of the Soviet system wen you probably wheren't even born then, this is a lesson: Soviets took care of their people well and their medicine was top.

You're kidding, of course. Although the USSR's health care system was universal, the quality was utterly abyssmal for the average citizen.

I was unfortunate enough to see first-hand the state of Soviet-era medical facilities and the quality of care in the mid 1980's. Many third-world countries had much better medical care than that of the "typical" Soviet hospital that we toured. And, given that this was a state-sponsored tour (as was everything that we saw), I suspect that it was something better than typical.

-h-

Re:Treatment was prompt

[noewun]

Actually, beginning in the late 60s, the Soviet Union suffered from a healthcare crisis: declining care, increasing infant mortality, rampant alcoholism, poor standards of sanitation and public hygeine, etc. The life expectancy of a Soviet male in the mid 1980s was six year less than in the 1960s, and the infant mortality rate was three times that of the U.S.

Re:Treatment was prompt

[Izago909]

Their healthcare system may not have been top notch for all people, but their doctors were just as dedicated and, dare I say, more imaginative. They knew how to do something, but didn't have the tools, sot they would devise ingenious substitutes.
Have you ever seen anything about the ice surgeons performing heart surgery with no life support? They administer drugs to block adrenaline, and pour crushed ice around the body until the heart stops. From there they have about 60 minutes to get in and out. When they are done they wrap the person in heated blankets and heating pads and inject them with a large dose of adrenaline, maybe an electric shock if necessary. The lesson is that the tools are only half of the story; the doctors are the other half.

Re:Treatment was prompt

[mi]

Soviets took care of their people well and their medicine was top.

As someone, who was not only born then, but also lived there -- in Kyiv -- at the time, I authoritatively state: you are wrong.

This is a sign, that nuclear engineers were a really prized folk. Dozens of firefighters and lower-rank workers died right there -- radiation is like that, you don't feel it, until it is too late and noone bothered to warn them. Soviets most certainly did not care of their people, unless -- as in the case of these engineers -- educating them took a while.

They flew these guys to Moscow, which also means, that Kyiv -- Ukraine's capital, a city of 2.5 million people merely 100 miles away -- did not have the proper facilities. The medicine was not top -- individual scientists and labs did have notable successes, but the public health was awful.

Would Be Interesting to View in US

[ackthpt]

Alexander Yuvchenko will appear in Disaster at Chernobyl on Discovery Channel in Europe at 10pm (UK time) on 29 August

Anyone up for recording this and making it available?

Back in 1990 I caught a photo exhibit by Igor Kostin in Baltimore, MD. He was the first photographer in the area after the accident and toured it afterwords, taking many pictures which are still very disturbing to remember.

It's remarkable how optimistic he is on nuclear power, even with his concerns of safety above finanancial or even political concerns.

heroism in the face of bad design and decisions

[vg30e]

I don't dispute the heroic efforts by everyone who put their lives on the line, but the tragic fact is that the chernobyl reactor fire could have been avoided if there had been more attention paid to safer reactor design and materials.

Although the fire itself was caused by human error, the RBMK style reactors are much worse than the machines run by the US or western Europe and the powers that came up with that style of reactor are at least partly to blame for that tragedy.

The end isn't in sight yet, the "coffin" that is encasing the bad reactor is cracking, it may collapse causing another giant radioactive cloud of dust to blow all over the Ukraine, Russia, and Europe.

"My neighbors don't know who I am"

[Zen Punk]

"...there is a stigma attached to it."

I had no idea that someone who was involved in Chernobyl would feel the need to hide the very fact that he was there.

What if this man was your neighbor and Chernobyl was your hometown? Would you harbor a grudge against him because he worked there?

After all, just because someone was there doesn't mean they were responsible for the accident. Like he said, "there was nothing we could do."

Re:Why Nuclear will never work..

[ender81b]

Sadly enough you are probably right.

The best example for nuclear power safety is the fact that after 50 years of operation of hundreds of Nuke power plants only 1 serious accident occurred - and that was at a poorly designed USSR station that would never have been allowed to be built in the US.

But, nowadays, we have some relaly, really, really fail safe designs that could be used like the Pebble Bed Reactor that can never ever melt down even assuming a complete and total failure of all safety backups, coolant etc (of course, it could still cause contamination if a break in the cooling or such occurred).

Now, OTOH, you have people like the US Navy who have a *perfect* record for Nuclear safety simply because if their was ever an accident the Navy knows that would likely be the end of all their Nuke powered boats (helluva a motivator eh?)