"Angel, the third angel sounded the trumpet, and a great star, and the torch fell from the sky, and fell on one-third of the rivers and the fountains of water. This star is called the Star of Pansy. And one-third of the waters became bitter, and because the waters became bitter, many died. ”
This is a passage from the book of Revelation in the Bible. Years later, the parable points to a city, a city that drips bitter water for humanity, Chernobyl.
Heavy chemical protection masks, white chemical protective suits, fighting death in the forbidden land of life.
"I went up with the commissar yesterday, and it's just death on it, there's nothing to be afraid of." This is a phrase spoken by the Soviet general at the time of mobilization in Chernobyl.
The 3,828 fighters and miners each had only 40 seconds to clean up the highly radioactive graphite, and what awaited them in the end was the after-effects of high-intensity radiation, dying in endless pain.
However, the generals, the heads of military districts, commanders, and political commissars led the soldiers in front of the people.
Before the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear power plant explosion, Gorbachev had just become the new leader of the Soviet Union. Not long after he came to power, he devised a series of drastic reforms to confront the Soviet Union's stagnant economy for many years.
In terms of energy, Gorbachev proposed that nuclear power should be vigorously developed, and nuclear power plants should be built that are 250% higher than the original planned power generation capacity, and that the outdated equipment for thermal power generation will be replaced in large quantities.
Before he came to power, the Soviet Union had lost three leaders in a row, and his youth finally injected a little spirit into the aging country. This aura has also spread to the energy sector.
Aleksandrov, the Minister of Science of the USSR and the head of the energy sector, once made a bold statement:
"Nuclear power plants can be built on Red Square, and they are as safe as a teapot that every Soviet has in their home."
As a result, the Chernobyl nuclear power plant project was officially launched, and the Soviet Union was very short of time and money at this time. The new energy minister has also called for a reduction in the time it takes to build nuclear power plants from seven years to five years.
Finally, in 1986, the Chernobyl nuclear power plant built a total of four nuclear reactors, and although the chief engineer emphasized its safety, the nuclear power plant at this time did not fully pass the inspection, but it was still put into operation in order to catch up with the shortened construction period of the Minister of Energy.
The disaster occurred on April 25, 1986.
Reactor 4 is planned to test the reactor's turbine power generation capacity in order to test that the reactor can also be returned to a stationary state in the event of a sudden power outage. The moment of inertia of the main steam engine should be powered by a generator to the cooling water pump for one minute, and the standby diesel engine should be given time to start.
At four p.m. on April 25, the staff lowered the power of the No. 4 reactor to simulate a power outage at the nuclear power plant.
At this time, due to the failure of a hydroelectric power station near Kyiv, the power department called off the experiment to ensure that the city had electricity. The experiment was postponed until the early hours of the morning, ten hours later.
At this time, the nuclear power plant was left with little experience as an operator, Trehuv, but fortunately, there was also an experienced duty officer.
Before the experiment began, the acting chief engineer of the nuclear power plant, Dyatlov, was also on the scene, and he was to personally control and direct the entire experiment, and he was not as reliable as his title sounded, and he was about to cause a disaster.
At 0:28, the power of the nuclear power plant plummeted to 30 megawatts, and Asimov, the head of duty at this time, realized that the previous night's power supply had been running and that a lot of xenon had been produced.
Xenon reduces the rate of the nuclear reactor, and according to the operator's manual, in this case, the reactor should be shut down and allowed to disappear through its own decay.
However, this also means that this time the experiment will end in failure, the other three reactors have passed the test, except for the three experiments of reactor No. 4, which Dyatlov, as the acting chief engineer, cannot accept.
Dyatlov, as an authority on the field, persuaded the duty director to restore power to the nuclear reactor and restart the tests.
He asked the young operator, Treyhuv, to pull out the control rods to increase the reactor's power, which was a violation of safety regulations, and Dyatlov ordered the alarm and the control rods to be turned off. And increasing the power in this way is tantamount to drinking water to quench your thirst.
Trekhov, under the command, switched to manual control and forcibly pulled out 205 control sticks, and this command became the engine of destruction.
The power rose to 200 megawatts, and only 6 of the 211 control rods were not pulled out, which Dyatlov ordered to re-experiment, and he also had his crew open two more pumps to ensure the water vapor pressure.
And every step of this operation makes the nuclear reactor even more unstable, and Dyatlov is taking the whole of Chernobyl to the cliff.
At 1:23:04 a.m., the test officially began, but only 36 seconds later, the nuclear reactor was out of control, and the duty director Asimov immediately pressed the emergency shutdown button to let the control rod be plugged back into the reactor, the front of the control rod is a long section of graphite to accelerate the reaction, and the back end is boron carbide to slow down the reaction.
And graphite, which was supposed to reduce fuel costs, became a firing pin for disaster.
During the insertion of the 205 control rods that had been pulled out earlier, graphite was the first to touch the reactor, and under the influence of graphite, the reactor began to flare violently. New neutrons consume the accumulated xenon and are produced in a steady stream.
Soon, the reactor twisted and deformed at the high temperatures, and then jammed the control rods, and the boron carbide at the back end did not work, and there was nothing to stop the reaction from happening.
The runaway power reached ten times the normal one. And it's already too late.
The fuel rods quickly melted, and the uranium fuel inside leaked into the water, producing a large amount of steam, like a wild horse.
With a loud bang, the 1,400-ton reactor roof was sent into the sky by a steam explosion, and a large amount of oxygen entering the reactor triggered a deflagration, and a large number of radioactive graphite fragments were sprayed outward with tongues of fire.
The light explosion produced by the absorption of high-energy rays by atoms in the air caused a blue pillar of light to appear in the sky above the nuclear power plant, and the radioactive material quickly spread to the surrounding area with the help of the shock wave of the explosion, and a large amount of radioactive dust produced by nuclear radiation particles filled the sky.
In Hiroshima 41 years ago, the nuclear bomb called "Little Boy" was loaded with 64 kilograms of uranium-235, of which less than 1 kilogram underwent a fission reaction, while reactor No. 4 had at least 5 tons of uranium-235. The radiation dose is probably more than 400 times that of the Hiroshima atomic bomb.
Twenty-eight firefighters from the Chernobyl No. 2 fire station were alerted to the fire and arrived at the scene within five minutes, followed by more reinforcements, who held out without any radiation protection until the fire was extinguished at 5 a.m.
But under the strong radiation, they all quickly fell.
Uranium-235's neutrons penetrate every cell in their body at nearly the speed of light, completely shattering their DNA, and on the way to the hospital, their skin has begun to blacken, their organs begin to fail, and then their skin begins to fester, their hair falls out, their bodies ripple, and finally they are not human.
Because of the ulceration of the digestive system, there is no ability to even eat. All the firefighters died in agony within 3 months.
Their bodies also became a source of radiation, and together with the clothes they worn, they were sealed in lead coffins and buried deep underground, waiting for the decay of time.
But they prevented the fire from spreading to reactor 3 from an even bigger disaster, and they were only the tip of the iceberg of the victims of the accident.
Late at night, Gorbachev received the news of the explosion at the nuclear power plant, and although the reporter concealed the seriousness of the incident, he still responsibly immediately set up a special investigation team and rushed to the scene as soon as possible.
The 3.6 roentgenium in the report is the upper limit of the instrument, and the graphite fragments on the site have a radiation dose of 20,000 roentgenium per hour, which is mercilessly devouring the surrounding life.
Although it was only 36 hours after the explosion that the government realized the seriousness of the incident and evacuated the nearest 44,460 citizens of Pripyat within 3 hours.
While the leaders were still holding meetings on political influence, shirking responsibility, and the international situation, in the midst of the vast crowd of evacuees, Soviet firefighters, anti-chemical warfare troops, and the army used their backs to bid farewell to their compatriots and marched towards the most dangerous places.
The Chief of Staff of the Air Force of the Kiev Military District of the Soviet Union, Major General Nikolai Antoshkin, flew the first reconnaissance flight in the Chernobyl accident, got close to the exploded reactor, and allowed the scientists in the rear cabin to successfully measure various data on the roof of the reactor, and in the first ten days of the accident, he continuously commanded and coordinated air operations, and suffered a large amount of radiation.
General Vladimir Pikalov, commander of the Soviet Chemical Defense Corps, after leading the troops to the scene, said: "I am already old, maybe only a few years to live, and the hope of life is left to the young commanders and fighters. ”
He then drove himself to complete the radiometric work in all the heavily radiated areas.
After the fire has been extinguished and the crowd has been evacuated, the nuclear reactor needs to be filled with borax to stop the nuclear reaction from happening.
Major General Anton Shkin and his helicopter unit were the first to embark on this mission, initially joining the sandbag carrying work while commanding it, and soon the local women joined the effort, just as their ancestors had dug trenches on the outskirts of Moscow.
The top of the reactor has only a five-meter-wide gap, and only 20% of the borax can be put into it.
The pilots had to stay over the reactor for another 4 minutes, and the transpiring air carried radioactive material, exposing them to 80 roentgens of radiation in a single flight. That's the dose that a normal person needs to go to the hospital for treatment right away.
The impact of strong radiation on the aircraft's circuit board makes the crash rate abnormally high. The pilots flew around the clock for eight days.
After 3,000 sorties and 5,000 tons of borax dropped, 600 pilots lost their lives to radiation and crashes.
Although borax prevented the reaction from further occurrence of the crisis. However, the temperature of the graphite inside is still very high, and the accumulation of borax further heats up the reactor, which is already in a lava state, and if it exceeds the melting point of concrete and invades the water-filled basement, it will cause a violent steam explosion.
And it will be nearly 100 times more powerful than the Hiroshima atomic bomb.
Life within 30,000 square kilometers will be lost in an instant, and most of southern Belarus and northern Ukraine will cease to exist. And Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, 170 kilometers from Chernobyl, is also within the radius circle.
In addition, if nuclear radiation spreads further, then the whole of Europe and even West Asia will suffer a catastrophe.
Someone needed to enter the basement under the core and open the drain valve to drain all the 20,000 tons of water that had accumulated there, and the amount of radiation in this area was simply incalculable.
On May 2, three engineers at the nuclear power plant accepted the assignment and entered the reactor basement with a piece of lead attached to their chests in their diving suits.
The three engineers were able to open the valve in an hour, avoid the high-radiation zone, and survive the near-death mission.
The proletarian never hopes for God's salvation, and the proletarian always saves himself. And the hymn of humanity is the hymn of courage, Boris Baranov, Valery Bespalov, Alexei Anenenko, who saved civilization and the world.
Although the core will no longer explode, it will still burn, and if it burns through the foundation and flows into the groundwater system, it will pollute the Dnieper near Fu, then the Black Sea, the Mediterranean, and the Atlantic, then the Bible prophecy will be fulfilled, and a third of the water will become "bitter water". But the proletarians do not need Bible guidance.
A group of miners from Ukraine's Donbas were sent to the front line, where they would manually dig a tunnel under the reactor to store the cryogenic equipment, they could not use any heavy equipment, only the most basic shovels, hoes, and hands, and the heat of nearly 50 degrees made it difficult for them to put on radiation protection equipment, and they worked shifts every three hours, complaining that they came too early when the workers in the back came to replace them.
Mikhail Shadov was the Minister of the Coal Industry of the Soviet Union, a miner, and unlike the American film "Chernobyl", he was the first to rush into the disaster area in real history.
Mikhail had been a miner since his student days, was awarded the Order of Labor, and after the outbreak of Chernobyl, he volunteered to go to the front.
On May 15, the head of the machine-building department, Yefimslavsky, received the task of permanently mothballing the nuclear reactor after the explosion to prevent the spread of radiation.
He planned to build a concrete structure that would enclose the entire nuclear reactor, which had the tragic title of sarcophagus. He soon began to mobilize troops and pull himself to the front line.
On May 21, Yefimslavsky personally visited the site of the reactor ruins and did not seem to care about the radiation, but he prevented his accompanying assistants from entering.
After investigation, the construction of the sarcophagus required the removal of all radioactive graphite from the roof of the reactor.
But cleaning up these graphite fragments is not easy, and the amount of radiation in each graphite fragment is enough to kill.
At first, two unmanned engineering vehicles were borrowed from Germany to carry out cleaning work in the most radiated areas, but in the strong radiation environment, the circuit boards inside the machinery were quickly scrapped and could not work at all.
And in a situation where no machinery could work, the commander of the engineering forces of the Soviet Army, General Taraknov:
"Comrades, please take a moment! Everyone knows what they are doing. The commissar and I just went to the top of the roof, and it was the Grim Reaper, but it wasn't a big deal!
Everything is ready, everyone goes to the top and shovels twice and hurry down, remember the essentials of protection! Ten people per group, no more than 40 seconds! Party members go first! Other comrades are following behind, stay safe! ”
Once again, the fighters of the Soviet Red Army stood in front of the people.
The task of cleaning up did not end until October, when the Soviet Red Army planted the red flag, a symbol of victory, to the top of the reactor. At the same time, the construction of the sarcophagus was also carried out simultaneously, and about 200,000 soldiers and workers from the Soviet Union participated in the construction of the sarcophagus.
They are exposed to radiation from 5 to 370 roentgenium per hour, working hand in hand against an unseen enemy. After five months of construction, the 400,000-ton sarcophagus was completed, and it will shield the whole world from radiation.
After the accident broke out, a detachment of more than 20 people, consisting of commanders, army commanders, and division commanders, also rushed to the scene of the accident as soon as possible.
Unfortunately, they all died after only 8 minutes. Eight of them left suicide notes, but the other dozen or so people didn't even have time to write suicide notes.
To this day, Chernobyl's surroundings are still uninhabitable, and the residual radiation and pollution still need to be healed for hundreds of thousands of years. Hundreds of square kilometers of land are only traces of wild animals, which have evolved radiation-resistant genes here.
The Soviet people showed their heroic nature of sacrificing their lives and forgetting their deaths, and the Soviet generals showed the spirit of courageous leadership. There have only been two magnitude 7 nuclear accidents in human history, one at Chernobyl and one at the Fukushima nuclear power plant.
The former used about 600,000 manpower to seal the demon behind concrete; The latter bowed a few times and let it out to the whole world to face. The sarcophagus of the Soviet Union still stands, and it is the greatest mockery that the red giant emanates from the ground.