Steinhäusler, Dr, 422–24
Stolyarchuk, Piotr, 77, 82
Strategic Defense Initiative, 229, 259
Strelichevko, 387
stress, 409
strontium 90: absorption of: in meat, 15, into the body via food chain, 317; ground contamination by, 152; half-life of, xxviii; retained by particular organs, 190
Suslov, Mikhail, 67, 330
Sverdlovsk, 14
Sweden: protests by, 228; radioactive particles in wind reported, 149
Tam, 7
TASS: issues statement about accident (9 p.m., 28 April), 155; reports to Soviet people, 230
Teliatnikov, Maj., 111
‘Temporary Instructions on Measures to Be Taken to Protect the Population in the Event of Nuclear Explosions’, 154
Terasaki, Paul, 198, 201–2, 210
Terebilov, Vladimir, 301
Third Division of the Ministry of Health, 120, 383
Three Mile Island, xxi, 25, 55, 63, 237
thyroid glands: cancers in, report of Kiev Institute of Endocrinology, 414–16; cancers of: in children, 325, 457–58, predicted over 30 years, 374; disfunction among children, 352; increase of disease in Narodici, 375; number affected by radiation in Ukraine, 382; radiation doses to, 317–19; report of International Advisory Committee, 412
Tilles, Dr Robert, 285–86, 298, 458; sets up Chernobyl Help, 395
Tithonenko, Fyodor and Olga, 386
Toptunov, Leonid, 77, 82, 105; at main control board during shutdown, 83; dies on 14 May, 208; dismissed by Akimov, 92; sent to hospital in Moscow, 189
Tormozin, Anatoli, 224
‘town with no name’: experimental station built (1949), 10; named Obninsk, 10; nuclear bomb project at, 8
Tregub, Yuri, 80, 82, 85–89
Tretyakov, Yuri, 348
Tribuna Energetica, 69
Truman, Harry S., 5
Truth About Chernonyl, The, xviii
turbine tests at Chernobyl, 64–65
Twenty-eighth Congress of the Communist Party, 426–27
Twenty-seventh Congress of the Communist Party and glasnost and perestroika, 225; policy of, need for change, 368
Ukraine: ecological anxiety in, 362–64; seeks independence, 450; uninhabitable parts of, xxi
Ukrainian Ministry of Health, 159, 171, 251
United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation, 155, 409; global dose of radon, 415–16
Uralmash military-industrial conglomerate, 130
uranium 135, 77, 135
Uskov, Arkadi, 105, 208
Ustyurt, 9
vapour from reactor, 135
Vederniko, G., 286
Velikhov, Yevgeni, 171, 243, 287; elected to Congress of People’s Deputies, 368; and glasnost, 24, 259–61; recommends construction of heat exchanger, 183–84; research into nuclear fission, 24; verdict in trial, 310–11
Veretennikov, Gennadi, 101, 125
Vetka, 400
VNIIAES: investigates causes of accident, 253–56; report to conference in Vienna, 260
vodka: as antidote to radiation sickness, 114–15, 247, 302, 375
Voice of America, 280, 358
Voloshko, Vladimir, 101, 306
Vorobyov, Prof. Andrei, 101, 134, 187–88, 250, 361–62; advises stable iodine use no longer effective, 195, 238; becomes minister of health, 450; develops system of biological dosimetry, 187–88; elected to Congress of People’s Deputies, 368; made member of secret medical commission, 187; medical commission in Moscow, 171; reports to commission, 216; warns of consequences of one-rem dose of radiation, 359–61
Vorobyov, Yevgeny, 133; press conference on 6 May, 210–11
Voronezhtsev, Yuri, 381–82
Voronin, Lev, 286
Vorotnikov, Vitali, 151
Voskresenski, Victor, 200, 212
Voznesensky, Andrei, 330
‘Vremya’, 150, 169, 218; reports to Soviet people, 230, 240
VVER reactors, 18, 43–44, 60
Wachholz, B.W., 415
Wilson, Prof. Richard, 376; at conference in Vienna, 271, 275
Windscale, 235
wood, 321
Working People’s International Solidarity, 159
World Health Organization, 195, 383, 409
Writers’ Union, 331; opposes nuclear power, 367
writing the story: impartiality and detachment of the author, xxvi–xxvii; obstacles to, xxiv
xenon gas, 78
x-rays, xxvii
Yakovlev, Alexander: attacks Molodaya Gvardiya, 330; in charge of radio and television, 450; and secrecy about accident, 230, 241–42; struggle over glasnost, 329
Yakovlev, Lt Col, 144
Yanayev, Gennadi: arrested, 447; coup attempt, 445–47
Yaroshinskaya, Alla, 381–82
Yavorivsky, Volodomyr, 264, 332, 366; elected to Congress of People’s Deputies, 369–70; frames Chernobyl Law, 397
Yazov, Dmitri, 445–47
Yeltsin, Boris, 228, 254; elected President of Russia, 425–26; refuses to cooperate with coup, 446; signs decree to prohibit Communist Party, 448
Yemelyanov, Ivan: blame for accident, 255, 270
Yevtushenko, Yevgeni, 330
Yuvchenko, Natasha, 80, 119, 146
Yuvchenko, Sasha, 80, 85–89, 95–96, 310; health of, five years after accident, 439; injuries, 221; KGB interrogates, 205–6; sent to hospital, 85, 189
Zakharchenko, Vasili, 349
Zalygin, Sergei, 330
Zaporozhye, 57
Zayat, Anatoly, 142–43
Zbrovsky, Capt., 178, 179
Zelenij Svit, see Green World
Zhitomir, 403
Zhukhov, Yuri, 235–36
Zhvanetsky, Mikhail, 42
zirconium, 135; alloy tubes, 38
Znamya, 266
zones of contamination, 350–53
‘zones of rigid control’, 316–17
Zorin, 239
Zukh-Hydroprojekt, 38, 52; report to conference in Vienna, 260
Acknowledgments
In writing this book I am indebted first and foremost to my Russian research assistant, Natasha Segal, who assembled all the published sources from different archives in Britain, Germany and the Soviet Union and arranged the two research trips that I made to Russia, Belorussia and the Ukraine in the spring and autumn of 1991. Despite the declassification of information about the Soviet atomic industry two years before, it required exceptional tact and skill first to find the different witnesses, and then to persuade them to talk to a Western writer. Although certain liberties had been established by the time we started our research in April 1991, there remained a real fear of a return to the former regime, and also a reluctance among some to reveal the shortcomings of their country.
I am also grateful to Robert S. Tilles, president of the relief organization Chernobyl Help in Moscow, and Sergei Grigorianz of the public foundation Glasnost, who extended the necessary invitations; to Volodomyr Shovkovshytny, president of the Chernobyl Union in Kiev; to his tireless assistant, Lyudmila Golybardova, and her husband, Leonid; to Lubov Kovalevskaya; to Nikolai Steinberg, then deputy chairman of the USSR State Committee for the Supervision of Safety in the Nuclear Power Industry; and Professor Anatoli G. Nazarov, chairman of the Supreme Soviet Committee of Investigation into the Causes of the Chernobyl Catastrophe.
I should also like to record my gratitude to all those in the former Soviet Union who spared the time to talk to me and who frequently, despite the scarcities of food and drink at the time, extended a hospitality that did honour to their tradition.
In alphabetical order, these were: Dr Armen A. Abagyan, Academician Anatoli Alexandrov, Ivan and Irina Avramenko; Vladimir Babichev, Professor Alexander Baranov, Drs Anatoli and Tatiana Ben, General Gennadi Berdov, Judge Raimond Brize, Victor and Valentina Brukhanov, Boris Chaivanov, Nina Chernaieva, W. Choleska, Vladimir and Nina Chugunov, Alexei and Antonia Dashuk, Razim and Inze Davletbayev, Academician Nikolai Dollezhal, Profess
or Boris Dubowski, Anatoli and Isabella Dyatlov, Konstantin Fedulenko, Vladimir Fedulov, Professor Andrei Gagarinski, Vadim and Ylena Grishenka, Professor Dmitri Grodzinski, Vladimir Gubarev, Alexander Gulevsky, Dr Angelina Guskova, Dr Ylena Holod, Academician Leonid Ilyn, Professor Yuri Israel, Professor Eugene Ivanov, General Ivanov, Alexander Kalugin, Mykola Karpan, Anna Karpushova, Dr Adolf Kharash, Ivan Khodeley, Igor Kirschenbaum, Vladimir Klimov, Professor Victor Knijnikov, Eduard Korotkov, Igor Kravchenko, Professor Yuri Ladzurkin, Lubov Lelelchenko, Vasily Lesovoy, Tania Likhacheva, Katya Litovsky, Vladimir Lukin, Dr Vladimir Lupandin, Nadezda Lutchenko, Professor Alexander Lutzko, Alexander Nemirovsky, Tatyana Nevmergikaya, Anatoli Nevmerzhitsky, Georgi Nogaevsky, Anna Odinokaya, Piotr and Tatiana Palamarchuk, General Vladimir Pikalov, Professor Nikolai Protzenko, Dr Anatoli Romanenko, Professor Eugene Ryzantzev, Nikita Schlovsky, Tatiana Seleviorsteva, Yuri Shadrin, Dimitry Shatalov, Ivan Shavrey, Leonid Shavrey, Vladimir Siroshtan, Professor Yuri Sivintsev, Efim Slavsky, Mikhail Stelmak, Dr Evgenia Stepanovna, Professor Arcadi J. Svirnovski, Fyodor and Olga Tithonenko, Arkadi Uskov, Academician Yevgeni Velikhov, Professor Andrei Vorobyov, Alexander and Natasha Yuvchenko.
In Kiev, I was given useful advice by Michael Behr of the International Red Cross, Cornelia Wendt of the Bavarian Red Cross, and Dr Edmund Lengfelder of the Radiobiological Institute of Munich University. Alexander Vlasenko kindly acted as interpreter on my visit to Chernobyl. I am also grateful to those who helped me in Moscow, particularly Serge and Manya Schmemann and Olga Voronovna. I would also like to thank Professor Richard Wilson and Marina Kostanetskaya, who gave interviews to Natasha Segal.
In Britain, I was given invaluable assistance on the technical aspects of the story by Lorna Arnold, John Collier, Ken Duncan and Bryan Edmondson, who read my manuscript and gave me the benefit of their considerable knowledge of, and long experience in, the nuclear field. They should not be held responsible for any errors that remain in the text or for any judgments that are implicit or explicit in what I have written. I would like to thank Robin Jones, Liza Dimbleby and Helena Fraser, who translated documents from Russian into English, and Michael Sarni, who made translations from Ukrainian. I am also grateful, for their advice, to David Morton, Dr Anthony Daniels, Norma Percy, Paul Mitchell, Andro Linklater, Dr Keith James, Marco Bojcun, Professor Terence Lee, Dr John Marks, Constantine Zelenko, Gemma Hunter, and John Roberts.
Finally, I should like to thank Emily Read, my wife, for correcting the manuscript of this book; Bonnie Levy for her superb copyediting of the final draft; my editor at Random House, who suggested that I should write it; and Gillon Aitken, who, at certain difficult moments, persuaded me to persevere.
About the Author
Piers Paul Read, third son of poet and art critic Sir Herbert Read, was born in 1941, raised in North Yorkshire, and educated by Benedictine monks at Ampleforth College. After studying history at Cambridge University, he spent two years in Germany, and on his return to London, worked as a subeditor on the Times Literary Supplement. His first novel, Game in Heaven with Tussy Marx, was published in 1966. His fiction has won the Hawthornden Prize, the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, the Somerset Maugham Award, and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. Two of his novels, A Married Man and The Free Frenchman, have been adapted for television and a third, Monk Dawson, as a feature film. In 1974, Read wrote his first work of reportage, Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors, which has since sold five million copies worldwide. A film of Alive was released in 1993, directed by Frank Marshall and starring Ethan Hawke. His other works of nonfiction include Ablaze, an account of the nuclear accident at Chernobyl; The Templars, a history of the crusading military order; Alec Guinness: The Authorised Biography, and The Dreyfus Affair. Read is a fellow and member of the Council of the Royal Society of Literature and a member of the Council of the Society of Authors. He lives in London.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
The author gratefully acknowledges permission to quote from Chernobyl: A Documentary Story by Iurii Shcherbak, translated from the Ukrainian by Ian Press, published by Macmillan in association with the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta.
Copyright © 1993 by Piers Paul Read
Cover design by Kat JK Lee
ISBN: 978-1-5040-3913-0
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