Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Interview With Chernobyl Engineer

Posted by michael on from the close-encounters dept.

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."

5 of 584 comments (clear)

  1. Quite a few by LordHatrus · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  2. Treatment was prompt by freedom_india · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    --
    "Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
    1. Re:Treatment was prompt by noewun · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

      --
      I am a believer of momentum and curves.
  3. Would Be Interesting to View in US by ackthpt · · Score: 5, Interesting
    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.

    --

    A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
  4. heroism in the face of bad design and decisions by vg30e · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.