Former director of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, Viktor Bryukhanov: “At night, passing by the fourth unit, I saw that the upper structure above the reactor No! Viktor Petrovich Bryukhanov: biography

Former Chernobyl director Viktor Bryukhanov.

MK special correspondent met with those who were appointed switchmen for the worst man-made accident of the 20th century

Masataki Shimizu and Viktor Bryukhanov. These names have a long radioactive trail. One is the president of the operating company of the Fukushima-1 emergency nuclear power plant, the other is the former director of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. The national nuclear disaster and personal tragedy in their lives happened 25 years apart. After Shimizu did not appear in public for several weeks, rumors spread about his suicide. Many have already “buried” Bryukhanov as well. After two strokes, Viktor Petrovich lives as a recluse in a remote neighborhood on the outskirts of Kyiv. In 1986, the deputy, laureate and order bearer was declared a criminal and received 10 years in the camps. The blame for the exploded reactor, the death of 30 people, the damage caused by two billion rubles was shifted exclusively to the operating personnel and the management of the station. What the former director of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, Viktor Bryukhanov, and five of his subordinates had to go through - in the material of the special correspondent of MK.

“Life has cracked - I’m going to Troyeshchina” - this is what the people of Kiev say about a remote residential area on the left bank of the Dnieper. After the accident, the workers of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant were settled in this residential microdistrict of Kyiv, as well as in the Kharkov massif and on Pravdy Street.

The people of Kiev looked askance at us: we took away 3.5 thousand apartments from them, - says Ivan Tsarenko, former deputy director of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant for personnel. - The idea to name the street Pripyatskaya did not find support among the locals ...

Parents forbade their children to sit at the same desk with the "Chernobyl" children. And from Pripyat schoolchildren formed separate classes. There was a joke in the course: “Gingerbread Man, Gingerbread Man, I’ll Eat You!” - "Don't eat me, Wolf, because I'm not Kolobok, but a hedgehog from Chernobyl." Only the inhabitants of the city of power engineers did not laugh.

We were the last to evacuate with documents from the city committee. Of course, they managed to pick up the devil knows what ... When I washed my hair in the evening before leaving, the whole bath was strewn with hair, - says Ivan Tsarenko's wife, Valentina.

In polyclinics, the medical cards of the "Chernobyl victims" stood on separate shelves. Visitors were shunned like lepers. They huddled together in the diaspora, forming a separate Pripyat nation. And they had their own truth about the disaster. Unlike the one presented to the public in 1987 by the Supreme Court of the USSR.

Working days of the power plant.

“It is fate that caught up with us”

25 years have passed, and the night of April 26 is still before our eyes, - says Ivan Tsarenko. - ChNPP for the reporting year was recognized as the best in the system of the USSR Ministry of Energy. A decree had already been signed on awarding the station, the Order of Lenin was to be presented by the May Day holiday. Deputy directors of all the country's leading nuclear power plants came to us to share experience. That's because fate has gathered ... And in the second hour of the night exploded.

Viktor Bryukhanov, director of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, cannot calmly recall this terrible April day. The pressure rises immediately. After two strokes, he sees practically nothing, words are given to him with difficulty. His wife, Valentina Mikhailovna, became his eyes and mouth. About the recent examination of her husband, she says so: “We were given ten injections. We took a course of acupuncture.” They are one with Viktor Petrovich, they have been together for more than half a century.

On April 26, 1986, the head of the chemical department called Victor at night: something happened at the station, Valentina Bryukhanov speaks slowly, with an arrangement. - The husband tried to contact the shift supervisor, but no one picked up the phone on the fourth block. Ordered everything officials gather in the bunker, at the headquarters of civil defense. I jumped on the duty bus. From the city of Pripyat to the station - two kilometers. Then he confessed to me: “I saw the upper part of the fourth block cut off by the explosion and said aloud:“ This is my prison.

You know, it's fate that caught up with us. In 1966, we were at the epicenter of a devastating earthquake in Tashkent. Miraculously saved. The entire city and surroundings lay in ruins. Then we decided: we must leave Uzbekistan. And exactly 20 years after the Tashkent earthquake - on the same day, on April 26, there was an accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. The trouble came the same way, at night.

“If I had my power, I would have shot you”

The fourth power unit was supposed to be shut down on April 24. When the reactor was shut down, an experiment was planned. I had to find out if it was enough. mechanical energy generator until the spare, backup diesel generator reaches the desired mode.

These were the usual routine maintenance provided for by the reactor project, says Ivan Tsarenko. - A year before, similar tests had already been carried out at the third block - before it was taken out for scheduled repairs.

The customer of the experiment is Dontekhenergo. Its representative, Gennady Metlemko, arrived at the station well in advance. All documents were signed and approved.

On April 25, at one in the morning, the personnel began to reduce the power of the reactor. At 14:00, according to the approved program, the reactor's emergency cooling system was turned off. And at that moment, the Kyivenergo dispatcher demanded to delay the shutdown of the fourth unit. The reactor operated for 12 hours with the emergency cooling system turned off. At 23.10 the power reduction continued. At 1.23 the experiment began - the operator pressed the emergency protection button. This was provided for earlier in the briefing and was done to shut down the reactor along with the start of turbine rundown tests in normal, not emergency mode. But thermal power reactor suddenly started to grow abruptly. Two explosions were heard at intervals of a few seconds.

Many times later, the station workers asked the scientists: “How can emergency protection not to jam, but to blow up the reactor?” There could only be one answer: this is how the reactor was designed.

Bryukhanov was accused of handing over to Kyiv a certificate of low radiation levels on the first day ...

It was necessary to find the last one, so they found him, - says Ivan Tsarenko. - The first measurements were made by the workers of the station, but all the instruments were out of order due to large doses of radiation. We had a department of external dosimetry headed by Korabelnikov. He reported to Bryukhanov about the situation in Pripyat. Based on the data provided by him, Viktor Petrovich compiled reports. They were signed by an engineer in physics, and the secretary of the party committee of the station and the head of the department of the Kyiv regional committee of the CPSU always sat nearby.

Bryukhanov was the first to speak of the need to evacuate the population. The chairman of the Pripyat city executive committee and the secretary of the city party committee objected: "The government commission is coming, let it make a decision."

The first thing that the chairman of the government commission, Boris Shcherbina, threw in Victor's face was: “If it were my power, I would have shot you,” recalls Valentina Bryukhanov.

Viktor Bryukhanov with his wife (left) and granddaughter.

“You are under arrest. That will be better for you”

Only years later, the minutes of the meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU of July 3, 1986 were declassified with the note: “Owls. secret. Ex. the only one. (Working Record)”. The conversation was frank. It turned out that the RBMK-1000 reactor had a number of design flaws. Deputy Minister of Energy Shasharin noted that “people did not know that the reactor could accelerate in such a situation. You can type a dozen situations in which the same thing happens as in Chernobyl. This is especially true for the first blocks of the Leningrad, Kursk and Chernobyl nuclear power plant". Academician Alexandrov admitted that “the property of reactor acceleration is a mistake supervisor and chief designer of the RBMK, and asked to be relieved of his duties as president of the Academy of Sciences and given the opportunity to finalize the reactor. It was said that in the 11th five-year plan, 1042 emergency shutdowns of power units were allowed at the stations, including 381 at nuclear power plants with RBMK reactors. This information was intended for the top leadership of the country, for internal use. The people were told through the Pravda newspaper: “The accident occurred due to a number of gross violations of the rules for the operation of reactor installations committed by the workers of the power plant.” Soviet technology was supposed to remain the most reliable in the world. "Switchmen pests" were found. The judicial machine was spinning. Bryukhanov was summoned to Moscow, at an expanded meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU, he was expelled from the party. When his old mother in Tashkent found out that her eldest son had been removed from his post, her heart stopped. And on August 13, Viktor Petrovich was taken into custody. First, they summoned me to the Prosecutor General's Office. After the conversation, the investigator announced: “You are under arrest. That will be better for you.”

Both the husband and the passbook account where he put his vacation money were arrested. And they evacuated us in the same dresses, - says Valentina Bryukhanov. - Only at the end of August I got to my apartment in Pripyat. The dosimetrist entered the door first. He allowed me to take some of the things and the book. We wiped each volume with a cloth dampened with a weak solution of acetic acid. They believed it could save from radiation.

For a year, while the investigation lasted, Viktor was alone in the KGB detention center, says Ivan Tsarenko. - Alone, they usually imprisoned before being shot. When taken into custody, it turned out that he received 250 x-rays, with sanitary standard for a station worker 5 roentgens per year. In the first days after the accident, he did not leave the Chernobyl nuclear power plant for days, he worked in the basement and upstairs. Several times I went up in a helicopter with members of the government commission over the blown-up rector.

Dyatlov, deputy chief engineer of the station for operation, who was at the time of the accident in the control room of the 4th power unit, with open non-healing wounds, spent six months in the 6th Moscow hospital. After being discharged, he was denied treatment at the sanatorium. The investigation demanded his arrest. And he lost 15 kilograms during his illness, he learned to walk again. But on December 4, he was moved to a casemate. They did not make allowances for the health of the 50-year-old chief engineer of the station, Nikolai Fomin. At the end of 1985, he crashed into a pine tree in his Zhiguli, broke his spine. After a long paralysis with an undermined psyche, he went to work, a month before Chernobyl explosion. In the SIZO cell, he broke his glasses and tried to open his veins with glasses.

"Open" Court closed area

The trial took place in the House of Culture in Chernobyl. The building was hastily repaired, bars were hung on the windows.

- “An open court in a closed zone” - so it was said in the press, - recalls the president of the Union “Chernobyl of Ukraine” Yuri Andreev. - It was possible to get inside only with special passes. The journalists were admitted twice: on the first day to hear the indictment and on the last day to hear the verdict. For 18 days, 40 witnesses, 9 victims and 2 victims came forward. The details and circumstances of the accident were discussed at working meetings. On the bench were: the director of the station Bryukhanov, Chief Engineer Fomin, his deputy Dyatlov, the head of the reactor shop Kovalenko, the head of the Rogozhkin station shift and the inspector of the Gosatomenergonadzor Laushkin.

They were tried under article 220 of the Criminal Code of the Ukrainian SSR - for improper operation of explosive enterprises. But nuclear power plants, according to no instruction, did not belong to explosive objects- says Ivan Tsarenko. - This was done by the forensic-technical expert commission retroactively.

It was clear that the court would decide the way it had already been decided at the top. Bryukhanov, Fomin and Dyatlov were sentenced to 10 years in prison. Rogozhkin was given 5 years in the camps, Kovalenko - 3, Laushkin - 2. The verdict was not subject to appeal. The materials of the case and information about the accident were classified.

Unit shift chief Sasha Akimov, reactor operator Lenya Toptunov, and reactor shop shift chief Valera Perevozchenko would also be imprisoned. But they died, - says Yuri Andreev. - Their wives and children did not fail to be reminded: your husbands and fathers are criminals. Each received a paper from the prosecutor's office by mail: “Criminal prosecution terminated on the basis of Article 6, paragraph 8 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of the Ukrainian SSR on November 28, 1986.” Death saved the guys from shame.

For Bryukhanov, the sentence of 10 years was a shock, says Ivan Tsarenko. He is very reserved by nature. He experienced everything in himself.

Later, he confessed to his relatives: “If they had found a shooting article for me, they would have shot me without hesitation.” The night after the verdict former director Chernobyl did not leave one for a minute. Near the narrow bunk, the guard placed a chair and did not take his eyes off the prisoner. He even went to the toilet under supervision. In the detention center, they feared that Bryukhanov would lay hands on himself.

Our eldest daughter, Lilya, was a nursing mother. Four months after the disaster, she gave birth to Katya. For a year that the investigation was going on, we protected Lily, we didn’t say that dad was in the detention center. She only knew that he was not allowed to call, - Valentina Bryukhanov shares with us. - And then finally on July 31, as an exception, we were given a meeting with Victor.

Only two adults and one minor were allowed to attend. Lilya, who came from Kherson, said: “I will definitely go.” Both my son and I also really wanted to see Victor. And then suddenly our youngest, Oleg, shouted: “I will only turn 18 on August 2, I am still a child.” How we jumped for joy that he would go too! They came, sat down to the glass - a partition. Vitya did not see the children for a year and kept asking: “Oleg, get up!” And the son grew up in the tenth, final grade, changed a lot. Then he said: “Lilya, get up, Valya, get up ...” He looked at us with wide eyes and wiped tears from his face. I could not utter a word at all, I was afraid to burst into tears. The next day, August 1, my son went to take an exam in mathematics at the institute - and, of course, he did not write anything. It was very hard. Thanks to Chief Engineer Nikolai Steinberg, who helped me get back to work at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. The shift after the accident worked for 15 days, then rested for 15 days. I asked to be allowed to work seven days a week. The pressure began to jump, it was bad both physically and mentally. I remember I came to the doctors, they were then based on motor ships. And then one, Dr. Gurnik, shook me by the shoulder: “Come on, pull yourself together! You have a family".

We were treated differently. There were those who hissed after him with hostility, but many sympathized. I am very grateful to one simple woman from Pripyat. Once, when I was walking from a bus stop and crying, she came up to me, hugged me and said: “Valyusha, why are you crying? Victor is alive, and this is the main thing! Look how many graves are left after Chernobyl.”

On October 9, we received an apartment in Troyeshchina. The people of Kiev considered this area to be settlements, but I liked it, I Big city do not really like. I got up with the dawn, early spring Until autumn I went to the river, the water gave me strength.

Measurement of radiation in the Chernobyl zone.

To each his own time is great

And Viktor Bryukhanov and five other workers of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant went on transfers. There were cells for 30 places, where 70 people were shoved. Lukyanovskaya, Kharkiv, Luhansk prisons… A shirt with a tag, a headdress with a “romantic” name “faggot”. And no one cares about your troubles - to each his own time is great. But even behind bars there were joys. For the first time in a year they saw green trees, sparrows.

Information about the transfer of the former director of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant flew ahead of Bryukhanov. The entire zone poured out onto the parade ground to stare at the “main culprit of the disaster”.

He adapted to live in the zone, - says Valentina Mikhailovna. - Victor was an unpretentious person. He grew up in large family. While studying at the institute, he could stand at the drawing board for 18 hours. When someone “burned”, he ran to Victor. He made many diplomas and term papers. It never crossed his mind to ask for money. He helped many people in the colony.

In order not to go crazy, Viktor Petrovich began to study English language. Soon I read the classics in the original. From the "thieves" and dangerous position of the chief dispatcher, who distributed the prisoners according to work, he refused. He worked as a mechanic in the boiler room, was engaged in the development of documentation for the reconstruction of the boiler room.

They lived by the fact that in letters they recalled the happiest years of life. After all, we met Viktor in Angren, where we both worked at the state district power station. I remember I saw the name Bryukhanov in the magazine - I also thought what a stupid surname. God forbid ... And she herself soon became Bryukhanova. Cars that came from the mountains brought armfuls of wild tulips. Victor made all the windowsills with flowers. They listened to the nightingales in the hazel groves. Then, already in Pripyat, we somehow swam on April 9 and suddenly we see: two elks swim out of the water, walk along the sand, shake themselves off.

The prison could not cross out the past. Even after the trial, the investigator said: “Now you can dissolve the marriage at any time.” Valentina Mikhailovna then barely restrained herself so as not to be rude in response. She was 48 years old, Viktor - 52. When her son Oleg got married, Bryukhanov was allowed to go home for a month. By that time, he had already served his sentence for common area, and in the colony-settlement in Uman.

Victor walked silently around the Kyiv apartment, everything around him was new to him. Friends and colleagues came in the evening. Where did they come from? Looking at the emaciated Vitya, we went into the kitchen, where my daughter and I cut salads, and began to cry. I hissed, “Come on, wipe away all the tears so he can't see. He needs support, not pity.”

Played a wedding. Our daughter married Bryukhanov's son, says Ivan Tsarenko. - We became matchmakers. Then I brought Viktor Petrovich home in my car every weekend. We stopped at the police station, put a mark: arrived, then left. All this was very unpleasant. But everywhere Bryukhanov was treated with respect. He "in chemistry" worked as a dispatcher in construction, was valued as a knowledgeable engineer. Nobody considered him a criminal.

“With things to go!”

Final: “With things to go!” - sounded for Viktor Bryukhanov in September 1991. Released early. The other five defendants in the "Chernobyl case" also served half of the term. Boris Rogozhkin went to Nizhny Novgorod. Nikolai Fomin developed a reactive psychosis in 1988 after two years in detention. He was sent to the Rybinsk neuropsychiatric hospital for prisoners YUN 83/14. Then, at the insistence of his relatives, he was transferred from the prison hospital to a civilian psychiatric clinic in the Tver region. At one time he worked at the Kalinin NPP. Doctors only temporarily alleviate his suffering.

Bryukhanov immediately went to Chernobyl after his release. We met him very warmly at the station and appointed him head of the technical department.

And when Viktor Petrovich turned 60 years old, the Minister of Energy of Ukraine Makukhin invited him to the post of deputy head of the Interenergo association. Bryukhanov dealt with contracts for the supply of electricity abroad, went on business trips to Hungary, Japan, and Germany. He worked until the age of 72, and only when his eyesight fell did he retire.

October 27, 1997 in Slavutych celebrated 20 years since the launch of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. We were also invited, - says Valentina Mikhailovna. - When Victor was called to the podium, the whole hall rose, they clapped so that my ears were blocked.

And what do Bryukhanov and I have now? - asks Ivan Tsarenko. - Certificate of liquidators of the first category, disability. They give 332 hryvnias for enhanced nutrition. By law, we should be paid eight minimum pensions. But the law doesn't work. They should give free medicines. But they don't. Viktor Petrovich has no resentment left, he says: “Chernobyl is my cross for life.”

Three of the former inmates are no longer alive. Dyatlov passed away at the age of 64 from heart failure. Kovalenko died of cancer. The same incurable disease also crippled Laushkin. He didn't even last a year at liberty. “Yura did not have time to get a residence permit in Kyiv - they did not want to bury him at the local cemetery,” says Yuri Andreev. - Until the organization of Chernobyl veterans intervened nuclear power plant, his body lay in the apartment for more than a week.”

In 1991, the newly assembled commission of the Gosatomnadzor of the USSR came to the conclusion that the Chernobyl accident had become catastrophic due to the unsatisfactory design of the reactor. Many of the accusations that were previously made against the station personnel were not confirmed either.

Do you believe that Viktor Bryukhanov and five station workers will be rehabilitated?

The court was allied. Who will do this now? - says Valentina Mikhailovna. - Forces are gone, life is lived. Victor had two strokes, the left side is failing. We went through therapy in the fall. My husband was given injections around the eyes, 10 ampoules - 1000 hryvnias. He suffers greatly that he cannot read and solve his favorite crossword puzzles. TV only listens, but sees only contours. You need surgery to repair your retina. But it is made only in four countries of the world. Who needs us now?

Kyiv-Moscow

The 71-year-old power engineer, who received 250 rem and 10 years in prison after the Chernobyl disaster, believes that reactor design flaws are to blame for what happened. found guilty of the accident were tried and given ten years in prison. True, they released it five years later. Bryukhanov does not like to remember the past, and at first he refused to give an interview to FACTS. Later, at the end of the meeting, he admitted that his wife Valentina Mikhailovna persuaded him. They say, to be silent means to agree with the dirt and untruth, which individual gentlemen writers have written a lot over the years.

“The Chernobyl nuclear power plant should have been closed immediately after the accident”

Viktor Petrovich! From the first days you were in the thick of it, received 250 rem (with an annual rate of 5 rem for a Chernobyl worker) and now you are a disabled person of the second group. Has your attitude towards nuclear energy changed?

No, it hasn't changed, - says Viktor Petrovich. - Talk about alternative sources electricity remain talk, to say the least. You can build a hundred, two hundred, a thousand windmills. Solve the problem in the village, microdistrict. But not more. In scale National economy such an industrial country as Ukraine needs completely different capacities. Even with the most advanced energy-saving technologies.

Coal, oil, gas will soon run out. Even water is not enough. WITH thermonuclear fusion fiddling around for fifty years - but to no avail. And it is not yet known whether it will work.

I would like, of course, to see a genius come up with something new But where is he? The reality is that we will not go anywhere from nuclear energy in the foreseeable future.

Do not forget that thermal stations are not so harmless. I myself am a thermal power engineer, before the Chernobyl nuclear power plant I worked for them and I know how much harmful substances they throw away.

I remember that somewhere at the turn of the 80-90s, environmentalists suddenly discovered that one of the most respected districts of the capital - Pechersk - was almost completely covered harmful emissions- as it turned out, Tripolskaya GRES!

Well, you see.

Then why did you once say that the Chernobyl nuclear power plant had to be closed immediately after the accident?

Yes, he did. But he meant something else. In the spring-summer of 1986, almost the entire staff changed at the station. Different people came to replace those who died, fell ill or were taken out of the zone according to dosimetric indications. Some are good, but they don't know the station well. But there were many others - who were not interested in anything, except for the salary, after the accident increased five times at the "dirty" station! People rushed for money. They could have done even more trouble I did not have confidence in such people.

And to close the station in 2000, when the team was formed, and a lot of money was spent on improving security systems, it was simply stupid. You see, the West demanded, promised help And where are these promises now?

“I first saw my granddaughter when she was almost five years old”

Shortly after the accident, when you were removed from your post, your health - both physical and moral - was not very good for you. Probably, it was possible to go somewhere else to another enterprise. And you stayed.

It was necessary to save the station, to return its working capacity. Indeed, before the accident, the four operating units of the Chernobyl NPP - by that time the newest and most modernly equipped (among reactors of this type) - generated 15 percent of the electricity produced in Ukraine, more than the entire energy sector of such a serious industrial country as Czechoslovakia! Plus, the fifth and sixth units were under construction. I can say that I could open any door in the regional committee of the party with my foot.

After being removed from the post of director, I was transferred to the position of deputy head of the production department. Hope my experience is helpful. After all, he began to build the station and the city of Pripyat from the first peg in an open field, he knew like the back of his hand not only her, but also where which pipe was buried in the city, where which valve

Here, at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, my wife worked, also a heat engineer. Our children grew up in Pripyat.

Where were you at the time of the accident?

Slept at home. The day before, my daughter and son-in-law arrived from Kyiv for the weekend, both graduated from medical school. Lily was in her fifth month of pregnancy. When, it seems, on the 27th, the question of evacuation arose, I gave the keys to our Zhiguli car to my son-in-law Andrey, ordered me to take my daughter, my ninth-grader son and leave. They did not drive even five kilometers, when near the village of Kopachi (because of the heavy pollution of houses and sheds, it was later demolished), they had to let a multi-kilometer column of buses going to evacuate Pripyat pass.

It was stuffy in the car, the windows were opened. Upon arrival in Kyiv, we went to familiar radiologists. They tried it on - and Lilin's clothes ring on one side. She lay on her side back seat.

And what about the baby? After all, they said that all pregnant women in those days were almost forced to have abortions.

Thank God, everything worked out for us. The granddaughter was born. True, I saw her for the first time at almost five years old, when I was released. It didn't take long for her grandfather to recognize him. Now he is studying at the Academy of the Ministry of Internal Affairs And my son is a power engineer, he works at the Kyiv CHPP-6, he also has a family.

Excuse me, could you tell me how the accident started? Were there premonitions, ominous signs, bad dreams?

The wife says that a couple of weeks before the accident she had some kind of anxious mood, although no troubles seemed to happen. I disappeared at work until late in the evening, came barely alive to sleep. And there was no time to think about something like that.

In addition to the station, I had to take care of normal life, the development of a 50,000-strong city, and provide patronage assistance agriculture. For example, in March, the district committee set the task of building two 400-ton hay storage facilities. Of course, the station had money. But building capacity was limited. And the party demanded We built, say, five swimming pools for children in Pripyat, the largest one is 25 meters. The secretary of the regional committee says: now the system is 50 meters long so that international competitions can be held! I told him: such pools are provided for by the regulations only in cities with a population of over a million. And he: build! And they built. And they built an indoor skating rink You see, for the district committee there was no difference who you were - a nuclear power plant or a vegetable factory. Die, do it. Later, in the 1990s, I once visited Western nuclear power plants and envied their directors. They are only engaged in the operation of their facility. Not what we have

“There was no experiment! Routine check of systems provided by the design of the reactor"

At night, around half past one, as soon as this happened, the head of the chemical workshop called me. And not from work, but from home. He lived at the entrance to our city, the windows overlooked the station. “Viktor Petrovich,” he said, “something happened It looks like something serious. Didn't they call you?" Strange, I think, usually the head of the station shift reports. And if there is an emergency, the telephone operator warns, and she calls everyone, whom she should, calls to the station. IN this case I tried calling - to no avail. Nobody answered.

Then I went out, got on the bus on duty, which was supposed to take out the next shift Passing by the fourth unit, I saw that there was no upper structure above the reactor! I realized that there was an explosion. But I didn't think it was a reactor. Hydrogen could explode there. If the deputy head of the electrical department, Alexander Lelechenko, had not pumped hydrogen out of the generator cases and other power engineers had not allowed the accident to spread to other units at the cost of their lives, it would have been much worse.

First of all, I gave the command to the telephone operator to convene all the leaders up to the heads of kindergartens, which is provided for by the civil defense plan in case of such a severe accident. Then he reported to the head of the central office in Moscow. We obeyed Moscow, not Kyiv. Then he called the Minister of Energy of Ukraine, the secretary of the regional party committee, the chairman of the regional executive committee, the leaders of Pripyat He said that a serious accident had occurred. What exactly - we do not know yet, we understand.

At night I went out into the courtyard of the station. I look: there are pieces of graphite under my feet. But I still did not think that the reactor was destroyed. It didn't fit in my head. Only later, when the helicopter circled around But still at night, as soon as he was convinced that high levels radiation, told the chairman of the Pripyat city executive committee and the first secretary of the city committee that the population should be evacuated. “No, wait,” they replied. - A government commission will come, let it make a decision "

In one of the publications, they wrote that the experiment that led to the accident was previously proposed to be carried out by other stations, but their management allegedly refused.

The author of this publication acts like one deputy writer who made his career at Chernobyl, not always bothering himself with authenticity. Yes, at one time the author of this article worked for us, I even hired him as deputy chief engineer, even before the station was launched. Then it turned out that he also needed not a station, but a career. Warm place in Moscow.

And, to put it mildly, he doesn't know. I will never agree with the concept of "experiment" in relation to the work carried out on the fourth block that night. At any plant, whether nuclear or thermal, when a unit is taken out for repair, the operation of all systems is checked (in order to know what needs to be repaired), including protection systems. And that night, the specialists were faced with the task of finding out how, how much time and in what quantity electricity would be generated for the main circulation pumps, supplying water to cool the reactor, when the generator is turned off due to the coast, that is, the rotation by inertia of its rotor. Do you understand? Let us assume that there is an urgent need to turn off the turbogenerator that generates current for both the national economy and the internal needs of the station, in particular, the supply of water to cool the reactor. And now the unit is disconnected from the network, but its rotor still rotates by inertia for some time, that is, it can generate electricity.

It turns out, it was the usual maintenance work?

Certainly! They were provided for by the reactor design! And a year before that, they were successfully carried out at the third block - before it was taken out for scheduled repairs. As for other stations, I don't know. They are older, the systems there could differ from ours, and it is quite possible that such tests were simply not included in their projects. Unfortunately, we often knew about some technical innovations at other stations only through personal acquaintance with the leaders. It was not customary to receive information in an official way, through the ministry. This was also our problem. Notorious closure.

In June, you were summoned to Moscow, to a meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU

The meeting lasted eight hours without a lunch break. Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR Nikolai Ryzhkov said: “We all went to this accident together, it is our common fault" And Politburo member, Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU Yegor Ligachev began to resent that the construction of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant was deployed near Kiev allegedly without the knowledge of the Politburo. The absolute lie! Not a single such object was built without the knowledge of the Politburo!

I was the third one. Mikhail Gorbachev asked if I had heard about the accident at the US nuclear power plant Three Mile Island. I answered yes. He didn't ask any more. The Minister of Energy was given a reprimand. Chairman of the State Committee for Supervision of nuclear power removed from work. I was expelled from the party. I returned to the station.

Your wife was evacuated along with other residents of Pripyat.

Yes, for two weeks I did not know where she was. And she returned from the evacuation to the station, began to ask for a job. Then many of us returned. But there was nowhere to put them. I say to Valya: "If I take you, I will have to arrange for the wives of other employees." And she, poor, went to Shchelkino, to build the Crimean nuclear power plant. Only later, when I had already been arrested, was she again taken to her native Chernobyl nuclear power plant.

Many colleagues sympathized with me, believed that it was not we, the operators who did everything right, but the imperfection of the equipment, who tried to defend me in court, as well as the chief engineer, his deputy, the shift supervisor, the shop manager and the inspector of Gosatomenergonadzor who were on trial . The arguments of those who accused us did not stand up to scrutiny. Therefore, on the day of the last meeting of the Supreme Court of the USSR, which was held in Chernobyl, the party authorities organized some kind of meeting, to which the entire management team and leading specialists of the station were summoned without fail so that those who could speak in our defense would not end up in court. We were given 10 years in prison with the chief engineer and his deputy. The head of the shift - six, the head of the shop - three, the inspector - two.

I knew that I had to take responsibility for what had happened. This is the system in our country. But the sentence seemed too harsh to me. Sitting in a colony general regime in the Luhansk region for five years. He worked as a boiler house mechanic. Colleagues convicted with me also served half their terms. Three of them - the deputy chief engineer, the head of the workshop and the inspector - have already died.

What helped you to survive, not to sleep, not to go crazy? After all, in addition to all the troubles, did you have to communicate with prisoners?

Yes, 95 percent of those whom I saw there, it is difficult to consider people. But I stayed away from them, I didn’t play their games, I didn’t touch anyone, and they didn’t touch me. What helped me the most was the support of family and friends.

There was an opportunity to get a job at the station. But I thought: it’s already hard to go there from Kyiv every week. Thank you, my friends helped me get a job at Ukrinterenergo as a deputy CEO. Was amazed by this. Once I was invited to the House of Officers in Kyiv for a solemn meeting dedicated to the 25th anniversary of nuclear energy. Suddenly they are called to the stage to give something there. And then the whole room stood up and began to applaud. I barely held back my tears.

The same thing happened later at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.

Have you been to Pripyat then?

Yes, it would be better not to go. The city that he built himself is no longer needed by anyone. The apartment was ransacked, the door was torn out with meat. Not even the old photographs remained.

What do you think is the cause of the accident?

Many are inclined to believe that the shortcomings of the reactor are to blame. When I, already in prison, got acquainted with the case, I found in it a copy of a letter from one employee of the Kurchatov Institute to Mikhail Gorbachev. The scientist complained to the Secretary General about Academician Alexandrov, to whom he twice wrote in writing about the fact that the RBMK reactor was not perfect, it could not be operated. The academician ignored all these appeals.

Academicians Velikhov and Legasov came to the station. Have you spoken to them?

No, they didn't let me in. Very well said recently. former minister energy of Ukraine Sklyarov: we must demand from the IAEA to finally give an official conclusion

Bryukhanov Viktor Petrovich(was born December 1, 1935( 19351201 ) year, in the city of Tashkent, USSR) - former director of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.

After graduating in 1959 from the energy department of the Tashkent polytechnic institute worked at the Angren TPP (Tashkent region) as a deaerator plant duty officer, feed pump operator, assistant turbine operator, turbine operator, senior operator of the turbine shop, shift supervisor, head of the turbine shop.

In 1966 he was invited to work at the Slavyanskaya GRES ( Donetsk region), where he worked until 1970 as a senior foreman, deputy head of the boiler and turbine shop, head of this shop, deputy chief engineer.

Member of the CPSU since 1966. Delegate of the XXVII Congress of the CPSU (1986). In the period from 1970 to 1986, he was repeatedly elected a member of the bureau of the Kyiv regional, Chernobyl district and Pripyat city committees of the party, a deputy of the Chernobyl district and Pripyat city Councils of People's Deputies.

From April 1970 to July 1986 - Director of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant named after V. I. Lenin. After the accident in 1986, he was removed from the post of director and from July 1986 to July 1987 - deputy head of the production and technical department of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.

On July 3, 1986, by decision of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU, "for major mistakes and shortcomings in work that led to an accident with serious consequences," he was expelled from the ranks of the CPSU.

On July 29, 1987, by a decision of the Judicial Collegium for Criminal Cases of the Supreme Court of the USSR, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison to be served in a correctional labor institution of a general type.

Since August 1991, he has been living in the Vatutinskiy (now Desnyanskiy) district of the city of Kyiv. Since February 1992, an employee state enterprise Ukrinterenergo. Participant in the liquidation of the consequences of the Chernobyl accident (category 1). Disabled group II.

Laureate of the Republican Prize of the Ukrainian SSR (1978). Awarded: Order of the Red Banner of Labor (1978), Order of the October Revolution (1983), medals “For Valiant Labor. In commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the birth of V.I. Lenin "and" Veteran of Labour", Certificate of Honor of the Supreme Council of the Ukrainian SSR (1980).

In the second part special project dedicated to the 30th anniversary of the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, Radio Liberty talks about the investigation into the causes of the disaster, about the accusations against the operators who operated the reactor on the fateful night and about the real culprit of the explosion.

At the end of August 1986, an IAEA conference was held in Vienna, to which the Soviet delegation brought an official report on the causes of the Chernobyl accident, its consequences and their elimination. The Soviet report presented by the head of the delegation, Valery Legasov, formed the basis of the INSAG-1 report of the International Nuclear Safety Advisory Group (INSAG). Both documents placed almost all the blame for what happened on the personnel of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.

The key conclusion was formulated as follows: “The root cause of the accident was an extremely unlikely combination of violations of the order and operation mode. The accident acquired catastrophic proportions due to the fact that the reactor was brought by personnel into such an unscheduled state, in which the influence of positive coefficient reactivity to power growth".

This means that the more steam is in the core, the higher the rate of development of the chain reaction, moreover, the reactor can go into a mode when its power starts to grow spontaneously. It is clear that this kind of relationship is critically dangerous: atomic reactor in no case should it uncontrollably heat itself up, otherwise the explosion is only a matter of time. This dangerous effect is inherent in the design of the RBMK reactor - and this is also recognized in the report, but with a caveat: it becomes dangerous only because of fatal errors of the operators. This can be compared with the statement that the plane, of course, can fall if the crew did not refuel, opened all the hatches at a height, stopped the engines, and then sent the car straight into the ground.

None of our documents, none of our textbooks says that our reactors can explode

A year later, in the courtroom, it will turn out that the station operators simply did not know about this dangerous effect. The show trial began in July 1987, in a house of culture in the city of Chernobyl, specially renovated for this purpose. The defendants were six people: station director Bryukhanov, chief engineer Fomin, head of reactor shop No. 2 Kovalenko, Gosatomnadzor inspector Laushkin, station shift supervisor Rogozhkin and Anatoly Dyatlov. The court session lasted 18 days, all defendants were convicted. Director Bryukhanov, chief engineer Fomin and his deputy Dyatlov each received 10 years in prison, Rogozhkin, Kovalenko and Laushkin were sentenced to shorter terms. It can be said that the panel of judges issued one acquittal - to the RBMK-1000 reactor.

Here are some quotes from the speeches of the defendants and witnesses at the trial.

Kovalenko: "None of our documents, none of our textbooks says that our reactors can explode."

Rogozhkin: "I worked for 34 years at uranium-graphite reactors, but never, nowhere was it noted that they explode. I only found out about this in the prosecutor's office."

Dick, station shift supervisor: “In reactor physics, we were completely unaware of the dangers of operating a reactor at low power ... RBMK was designed with a deviation from nuclear safety standards, the steam effect is positive. This led to reactor acceleration. This should not happen according to all physics textbooks ".

Kazachkov, former boss shift of the 4th power unit of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant: "Even if the regulations were observed, it could explode. There is a positive steam effect. [...] I believe that a reactor of this type should have exploded sooner or later. [...] At Smolensk, Kursk, perhaps at the Leningrad NPP (where RBMK-1000 reactors were also used. - RS), due to the high steam reactivity coefficient and the lack of restrictions, there was a constant danger of an explosion.

However, the official experts summoned to court objected. One of them, by the name of Polushkin, said: "Such a reactor can be operated and safely. It is only necessary to operate it correctly." Polushkin, invited as an independent specialist, was in fact one of the creators of the RBMK series of reactors.

Before official recognition: not so much people are to blame for the disaster as the imperfection of the reactor design, another 6 years will pass. On the second anniversary of the disaster, Academician Legasov, who presented accusations against personnel at an IAEA conference, was found hanged in his Moscow apartment. New conclusions were made in the report of the Commission of the USSR State Committee for the Supervision of safe management works in industry and nuclear energy, published in 1991. Two years later, their conclusions were confirmed and refined by the report of the IAEA advisory group INSAG-7. “Due to the current perception of events, there is a need to shift the focus so that it is more [rather than the actions of personnel] related to the design safety deficiencies discussed in INSAG-1, as well as to recognize the problems caused by the structure within which the operation of the station," this document states.

The RBMK had two serious design problems. We already know about one - positive vapor reactivity. The second is the end effect of absorbing rods. When they descend into the core, they must quickly stop nuclear reaction. But in the case of the RBMK-1000 reactor, they were designed in such a way that in the first few seconds of immersion, they not only did not slow down the reactor, but, on the contrary, slightly increased the reactivity in it.

In 1990, the Ogonyok magazine published an interview with Academician Anatoly Aleksandrov, director of the Institute atomic energy, President of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR and the main inspirer of the Soviet nuclear power industry. Answering a reporter's question, Alexandrov said: "Understand, the reactor has flaws. [...] It's not about the design. You drive a car, turn the steering wheel in the wrong direction - an accident! Is the motor to blame? Or the designer of the car? Everyone will answer:" An unqualified driver is to blame." Dyatlov, in his memoirs, responds in absentia to this statement in an emotional tone: "You are driving a car, you press the brakes. Instead of braking, the car accelerates. Accident! Is the driver to blame? Or maybe, after all, a designer, a citizen academician?

You are driving a car, you press on the brakes. Instead of braking, the car accelerates. Accident! Is the driver to blame? Or maybe, after all, a designer, a citizen academician?

So what really happened to the reactor that night? According to a fairly well-established consensus today, the situation developed as follows. The shutdown of the emergency cooling system on the afternoon of April 25 was fully consistent with the test program and did not play a role in further events. But the reduction in power from 720 to 500 MW in the first half hour on April 26 went beyond the expected regime. However, none regulations did not prohibit work under such conditions, and Anatoly Dyatlov, as the deputy chief engineer of the station, had the right to independently decide on the new regime. Power failure up to 30 MW during the transition to manual mode, apparently, indeed Leonid Toptunov's mistake, but the mistake is quite common, as the witnesses at the trial explained, a failure, greater or lesser, would have been made by any operator.

But in the next moment, the staff made a decision, because of which, apparently, they really should bear part of the responsibility for the accident. Instead of shutting down the reactor, which, according to some reports, was demanded by Akimov and Toptunov, they began to accelerate it by removing the absorbing rods from the core. Dyatlov wanted to conduct tests on that very day, and to conduct them successfully. Formally, the regulations did not require the shutdown of the reactor at low power, but from a physical point of view, it was at that moment that it began to work unstably. First, the fewer rods remain in the core, the more difficult it is to control the processes occurring in it. About the same as a car becomes less controllable when the clutch is depressed. Secondly, dangerous physical processes began to occur in the reactor zone: the neutron flux density distribution became uneven, so-called poisoning began in the central part of the reactor shaft - the release of gases that strongly absorb neutrons. Imperfect sensors did not give the personnel a complete picture of what was happening, and most importantly, none of the operators assumed that the reactor was in emergency mode.

Just as a large aircraft flying at low altitude is dangerous, so is the RBMK reactor at low power, at this level it is poorly controlled and controlled

Nikolai Karpan, Deputy Chief Engineer of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant for Science and Nuclear Safety, explained this in court as follows: “As a large aircraft flying at low altitude is dangerous, so is the RBMK reactor at low power, at this level it is poorly controlled and managed. capacity was not sufficiently studied. I think that the staff did not have a clear idea of ​​\u200b\u200bthe danger." The power was brought up to 200 MW and stabilized, but the reactor itself turned into a time bomb.

The alarms that warned of problems in the separator drums actually indicated that the reactor was close to a regime in which a positive steam reactivity coefficient could lead to an uncontrolled increase in reactor power. This is exactly what happened with the beginning of the tests: the power began to grow slowly at first, and then grow faster and faster.

Only at that moment did Dyatlov, Akimov and Toptunov finally realize that the car had lost control. And they pressed the brake - the emergency protection button AZ-5, dropping all the absorbing rods into the core at once. It seemed that this was guaranteed to shut down the reactor in any situation, in any mode of operation. But due to an end effect that apparently no one at the station knew about, the “brake” worked like a “gas” in the first seconds - and this small additional power surge turned out to be critical.

It is noteworthy that some Soviet engineers knew about the end effect of absorbing rods several years before the accident. It was discovered during the launches of the 1st unit of the Ignalina NPP in Lithuania and the 4th unit of the Chernobyl NPP back in 1983. The scientific director of the RBMK-1000 project then pointed out that “when the reactor power is reduced to 50% (for example, when one turbine is turned off), the reactivity margin decreases due to poisoning and distortions of the high-altitude field arise. [...] The operation of A3 in this case can lead to positive reactivity. Apparently, a more thorough analysis will reveal other dangerous situations". Recommendations were made to eliminate the dangerous end effect, but in the two and a half years that had passed before the Chernobyl accident, not only were they not implemented at the RBMK reactors operating in the country, but even the problem itself did not become known to the personnel working on them.

The INSAG-7 report also mentions a relatively minor, albeit resulting in radioactive release, accident that occurred at the RBMK reactor of the 1st unit of the Leningrad NPP on November 20, 1975. Its cause was the second fundamental problem of the RBMK-1000 project - the heating of the reactor itself due to the positive coefficient of steam efficiency. The task force concluded, the industry research institute made recommendations, but in fact, as stated in the INSAG-7 report, “lessons have been reduced mainly to very limited design changes or improvements in operating practices. Due to the lack of communication and information exchange [...] The Chernobyl NPP was not aware of the nature and causes of the accident at Unit 1 of the Leningrad NPP."

Perhaps the main words of the report of the IAEA INSAG-7 advisory group do not concern technical shortcomings of the RBMK-1000 project and not the actions of operators on the fateful night of April 26, 1986, but general structural and even "cultural" problems in the Soviet nuclear power industry, which seem to be inherent in Soviet industry in general: "We can say that the accident was the result of low culture safety not only at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, but in all Soviet design, operating and regulatory organizations of the nuclear power industry that existed at that time.Safety culture [...] requires a total commitment to safety, which in nuclear power plants is formed mainly by the attitude to this heads of organizations involved in their design and operation.

Sergei Mirny, who participated in the liquidation of the consequences of the Chernobyl accident as the commander of a radiation reconnaissance platoon, says that almost everyone was sure of the absolute safety of peaceful atom before the disaster - from specialists to ordinary people. “At the time of the explosion, I was a physical chemist by education, my military specialty was the commander of a radiation, chemical and bacteriological protection platoon, I was assigned to the only chemical protection regiment of the Kiev military district, it was the only such regiment in two-thirds of Ukraine,” says Mirny. "I knew that there was an accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Chernobyl, there was a short information, but they talked about it as a normal accident in industry. Three days later, they began to look for me, to call me from the military registration and enlistment office at a completely inopportune time before the holiday, they called both home and to work. I was amazed: I did not connect these two facts - that there was an accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and that they ring me on the phone. And my mother was the first to guess, she said: “Seryozha, maybe this is connected with the accident at the nuclear power plant? ” And my father and I slammed it together, well, like “what do you understand, it’s completely safe.”

Perhaps the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, even more than the beginning of my perestroika, was the real reason for the collapse of the Soviet Union

In fairness, it should be noted that major accidents at nuclear power plants occurred not only in the Soviet Union - both before and after the Chernobyl disaster (for example, the accident at the Three Mile Island plant in the USA in 1979 or the accident at the nuclear power plant Fukushima-1 in Japan in 2011). The fundamental factors of the Chernobyl tragedy are a low safety culture, the use of imperfect installations for reasons of economic benefit and state prestige, and most importantly, the belief that man has finally curbed the titanic natural forces he has unleashed. They can hardly be called specific to the USSR, they are quite universal. But the Chernobyl disaster, both in terms of the scale of radioactive contamination and in terms of socio-political consequences, surpassed by orders of magnitude not only other nuclear accidents, but also any man-made accidents. On the eve of the 20th anniversary of the Chernobyl accident, Mikhail Gorbachev wrote: “Perhaps the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, which occurred this month 20 years ago, even more than the beginning of my Perestroika, was the real cause of the collapse of the Soviet Union five years later. Indeed, the Chernobyl disaster was a turning point in history: there was an era before the disaster and a completely different era began after it."

MK special correspondent met with those who were appointed switchmen for the worst man-made accident of the 20th century

Masataki Shimizu and Viktor Bryukhanov. These names have a long radioactive trail. One is the president of the operating company of the Fukushima-1 emergency nuclear power plant, the other is the former director of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. The national nuclear disaster and personal tragedy in their lives happened 25 years apart. After Shimizu did not appear in public for several weeks, rumors spread about his suicide. Many have already “buried” Bryukhanov as well. After two strokes, Viktor Petrovich lives as a recluse in a remote neighborhood on the outskirts of Kyiv. In 1986, the deputy, laureate and order bearer was declared a criminal and received 10 years in the camps. The blame for the exploded reactor, the death of 30 people, the damage caused by two billion rubles was shifted exclusively to the operating personnel and the management of the station. What the former director of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, Viktor Bryukhanov, and five of his subordinates had to go through - in the material of the special correspondent of MK.

Former Chernobyl director Viktor Bryukhanov.

“Life has given a crack - I’m going to Troyeshchina” - this is what the people of Kiev say about a remote residential area on the left bank of the Dnieper. After the accident, the workers of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant were settled in this residential microdistrict of Kyiv, as well as in the Kharkov massif and on Pravdy Street.

“The people of Kiev looked askance at us: we took away 3,500 apartments from them,” says Ivan Tsarenko, former deputy director of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant for personnel. - The idea of ​​naming the street Pripyatskaya did not find support among the locals ...

Parents forbade their children to sit at the same desk with the "Chernobyl" children. And separate classes were formed from Pripyat schoolchildren. There was a joke in the course: “Gingerbread Man, Gingerbread Man, I’ll Eat You!” - "Don't eat me, Wolf, because I'm not Kolobok, but a hedgehog from Chernobyl." Only the inhabitants of the city of power engineers did not laugh.

- We were the last to evacuate with documents from the city committee. Of course, we managed to pick up the devil knows what ... When I washed my hair in the evening before leaving, the whole bath was strewn with hair, - says Ivan Tsarenko's wife, Valentina.

In polyclinics, the medical cards of the "Chernobyl victims" stood on separate shelves. Visitors were shunned like lepers. They huddled together in the diaspora, forming a separate Pripyat nation. And they had their own truth about the disaster. Unlike the one presented to the public in 1987 by the Supreme Court of the USSR.

Working days of the power plant.

“It is fate that caught up with us”

“25 years have passed, and the night of April 26 is still before our eyes,” says Ivan Tsarenko. — ChNPP for the reporting year was recognized as the best in the system of the USSR Ministry of Energy. A decree had already been signed on awarding the station, the Order of Lenin was to be presented by the May Day holiday. Deputy directors of all the country's leading nuclear power plants came to us to share experience. That's because fate has gathered ... And in the second hour of the night exploded.

Viktor Bryukhanov, director of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, cannot calmly recall this terrible April day. The pressure rises immediately. After two strokes, he sees practically nothing, words are given to him with difficulty. His wife, Valentina Mikhailovna, became his eyes and mouth. About the recent examination of her husband, she says so: “We were given ten injections. We took a course of acupuncture.” They are one with Viktor Petrovich, they have been together for more than half a century.

“On April 26, 1986, the head of the chemical department called Viktor at night: something happened at the station,” Valentina Bryukhanov says slowly, with an arrangement. - My husband tried to contact the shift supervisor, but no one picked up the phone on the fourth block. I ordered all officials to gather in the bunker, at the headquarters of civil defense. I jumped on the duty bus. From the city of Pripyat to the station - two kilometers. Then he confessed to me: “I saw the upper part of the fourth block cut off by the explosion and said aloud:“ This is my prison.

You know, it's fate that caught up with us. In 1966, we were at the epicenter of a devastating earthquake in Tashkent. Miraculously saved. The entire city and surroundings lay in ruins. Then we decided: we must leave Uzbekistan. And exactly 20 years after the Tashkent earthquake, on the same day, on April 26, there was an accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. The trouble came the same way, at night.

“If I had my power, I would have shot you”

The fourth power unit was supposed to be shut down on April 24. When the reactor was shut down, an experiment was planned. It was necessary to find out whether the mechanical energy of the generator would be enough until the moment when the spare, backup diesel generator reached the desired mode.

“It was the usual maintenance work provided for by the reactor project,” says Ivan Tsarenko. - A year before, similar tests were already carried out at the third unit - before it was taken out for scheduled repairs.

The customer of the experiment is Dontekhenergo. Its representative, Gennady Metlemko, arrived at the station well in advance. All documents were signed and approved.

On April 25, at one in the morning, the personnel began to reduce the power of the reactor. At 14:00, according to the approved program, the reactor's emergency cooling system was turned off. And at that moment, the Kyivenergo dispatcher demanded to delay the shutdown of the fourth unit. The reactor operated for 12 hours with the emergency cooling system turned off. At 23.10 the power reduction continued. At 1.23 the experiment began - the operator pressed the emergency protection button. This was provided for earlier in the briefing and was done to shut down the reactor along with the start of turbine rundown tests in normal, not emergency mode. But the thermal power of the reactor suddenly began to grow abruptly. Two explosions were heard at intervals of a few seconds.

Many times later, the station workers asked the scientists: “How can the emergency protection not shut down, but blow up the reactor?” There could only be one answer: this is how the reactor was designed.

- Bryukhanov was accused of handing over to Kyiv a certificate of low radiation levels on the first day ...

“We had to find the last one, so they found him,” says Ivan Tsarenko. - The first measurements were made by the station workers, but all the instruments failed due to large doses of radiation. We had a department of external dosimetry headed by Korabelnikov. He reported to Bryukhanov about the situation in Pripyat. Based on the data provided by him, Viktor Petrovich compiled reports. They were signed by an engineer in physics, and the secretary of the party committee of the station and the head of the department of the Kyiv regional committee of the CPSU always sat nearby.

Bryukhanov was the first to speak of the need to evacuate the population. The chairman of the Pripyat city executive committee and the secretary of the city party committee objected: "The government commission is coming, let it make a decision."

- The first thing that the chairman of the government commission, Boris Shcherbina, threw in Victor's face was: “If I had my power, I would have shot you,” recalls Valentina Bryukhanov.

Viktor Bryukhanov with his wife (left) and granddaughter.

“You are under arrest. That will be better for you”

Only years later, the minutes of the meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU of July 3, 1986 were declassified with the note: “Owls. secret. Ex. the only one. (Working Record)”. The conversation was frank. It turned out that the RBMK-1000 reactor had a number of design flaws. Deputy Minister of Energy Shasharin noted that “people did not know that the reactor could accelerate in such a situation. You can type a dozen situations in which the same thing happens as in Chernobyl. This is especially true for the first units of the Leningrad, Kursk and Chernobyl nuclear power plants.” Academician Alexandrov admitted that “the property of reactor acceleration is a mistake of the scientific director and chief designer of the RBMK,” and asked to be relieved of his duties as president of the Academy of Sciences and given the opportunity to finalize the reactor. It was said that in the 11th five-year plan, 1042 emergency shutdowns of power units were allowed at the stations, including 381 at nuclear power plants with RBMK reactors. This information was intended for the top leadership of the country, for internal use. The people were told through the Pravda newspaper: “The accident occurred due to a number of gross violations of the rules for the operation of reactor installations committed by the workers of the power plant.” Soviet technology was supposed to remain the most reliable in the world. "Switchmen pests" were found. The judicial machine was spinning. Bryukhanov was summoned to Moscow, at an expanded meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU, he was expelled from the party. When his old mother in Tashkent found out that her eldest son had been removed from his post, her heart stopped. And on August 13, Viktor Petrovich was taken into custody. First, they summoned me to the Prosecutor General's Office. After the conversation, the investigator announced: “You are under arrest. That will be better for you.”

“They arrested both my husband and the passbook account where he put his vacation money. And they evacuated us in the same dresses,” says Valentina Bryukhanov. - Only at the end of August I got to my apartment in Pripyat. The dosimetrist entered the door first. He allowed me to take some things and books. We wiped each volume with a cloth dampened with a weak solution of acetic acid. They believed it could save from radiation.

- For a year, while the investigation lasted, Viktor was alone in the KGB detention center, - says Ivan Tsarenko. - Alone, they usually imprisoned before being shot. When taken into custody, it turned out that he received 250 roentgens, while the sanitary norm for a station worker is 5 roentgens per year. In the first days after the accident, he did not leave the Chernobyl nuclear power plant for days, he worked in the basement and upstairs. Several times I went up in a helicopter with members of the government commission over the blown-up rector.

Dyatlov, deputy chief engineer of the station for operation, who was at the time of the accident in the control room of the 4th power unit, with open non-healing wounds, spent six months in the 6th Moscow hospital. After being discharged, he was denied treatment at the sanatorium. The investigation demanded his arrest. And he lost 15 kilograms during his illness, he learned to walk again. But on December 4, he was moved to a casemate. They did not make allowances for the health of the 50-year-old chief engineer of the station, Nikolai Fomin. At the end of 1985, he crashed into a pine tree in his Zhiguli, broke his spine. After a long paralysis with an undermined psyche, he went to work, a month before the Chernobyl explosion. In the SIZO cell, he broke his glasses and tried to open his veins with glasses.

“Open” court in a closed area

The trial took place in the House of Culture in Chernobyl. The building was hastily repaired, bars were hung on the windows.

- "An open court in a closed zone" - so it was said in the press, - recalls the president of the Union "Chernobyl of Ukraine" Yuri Andreev. - It was possible to get inside only with special passes. The journalists were admitted twice: on the first day to hear the indictment and on the last day to hear the verdict. For 18 days, 40 witnesses, 9 victims and 2 victims came forward. The details and circumstances of the accident were discussed at working meetings. On the dock were: station director Bryukhanov, chief engineer Fomin, his deputy Dyatlov, head of the reactor shop Kovalenko, station shift supervisor Rogozhkin and Gosatomenergonadzor inspector Laushkin.

- They were tried under article 220 of the Criminal Code of the Ukrainian SSR - for improper operation of explosive enterprises. But nuclear power plants, according to no instructions, were classified as explosive objects, says Ivan Tsarenko. - This was done by the forensic technical expert commission retroactively.

It was clear that the court would decide the way it had already been decided at the top. Bryukhanov, Fomin and Dyatlov were sentenced to 10 years in prison. Rogozhkin was given 5 years in the camps, Kovalenko - 3, Laushkin - 2. The verdict was not subject to appeal. The materials of the case and information about the accident were classified.

- Unit shift supervisor Sasha Akimov, reactor operator Lenya Toptunov, and reactor shop shift supervisor Valera Perevozchenko would also be imprisoned. But they died, - says Yuri Andreev. “Their wives and children have not failed to be reminded that your husbands and fathers are criminals. Each received a paper from the prosecutor's office by mail: “Criminal prosecution terminated on the basis of Article 6, paragraph 8 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of the Ukrainian SSR on November 28, 1986.” Death saved the guys from shame.

“For Bryukhanov, the sentence of 10 years was a shock,” says Ivan Tsarenko. “He is very reserved by nature. He experienced everything in himself.

Later he confessed to his relatives: “If they had found a shooting article for me, they would have shot me without hesitation.” On the night after the verdict, the former director of the Chernobyl NPP was not left alone for a minute. Near the narrow bunk, the guard placed a chair and did not take his eyes off the prisoner. He even went to the toilet under supervision. In the detention center, they feared that Bryukhanov would lay hands on himself.

- Our eldest daughter, Lilya, was a nursing mother. Four months after the disaster, she gave birth to Katya. For a year that the investigation was going on, we protected Lily, we didn’t say that dad was in the detention center. She only knew that he was not allowed to call, - Valentina Bryukhanov shares with us. - And then finally on July 31, as an exception, we were given a meeting with Victor.

Only two adults and one minor were allowed to attend. Lilya, who came from Kherson, said: “I will definitely go.” Both my son and I also really wanted to see Victor. And then suddenly our youngest, Oleg, shouted: “I will only turn 18 on August 2, I am still a child.” How we jumped for joy that he would go too! They came, sat down to the glass - a partition. Vitya did not see the children for a year and kept asking: “Oleg, get up!” And the son grew up in the tenth, final grade, changed a lot. Then he said: “Lilya, get up, Valya, get up ...” He looked at us with wide eyes and wiped tears from his face. I could not utter a word at all, I was afraid to burst into tears. The next day, August 1, my son went to take an exam in mathematics at the institute - and, of course, he did not write anything. It was very hard. Thanks to Chief Engineer Nikolai Steinberg, who helped me get back to work at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. The shift after the accident worked for 15 days, then rested for 15 days. I asked to be allowed to work seven days a week. The pressure began to jump, it was bad both physically and mentally. I remember I came to the doctors, they were then based on motor ships. And then one, Dr. Gurnik, shook me by the shoulder: “Come on, pull yourself together! You have a family".

We were treated differently. There were those who hissed after him with hostility, but many sympathized. I am very grateful to one simple woman from Pripyat. Once, when I was walking from a bus stop and crying, she came up to me, hugged me and said: “Valyusha, why are you crying? Victor is alive, and this is the main thing! Look how many graves are left after Chernobyl.”

On October 9, we received an apartment in Troyeshchina. The people of Kiev considered this area settlements, but I liked it, I don’t really like a big city. I got up at dawn, from early spring to autumn I went to the river, the water gave me strength.

Measurement of radiation in the Chernobyl zone.

To each his own time is great

And Viktor Bryukhanov and five other workers of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant went on transfers. There were cells for 30 places, where 70 people were shoved. Lukyanovskaya, Kharkiv, Luhansk prisons… A shirt with a tag, a headdress with a “romantic” name “faggot”. And no one cares about your troubles - to each his own time is great. But even behind bars there were joys. For the first time in a year they saw green trees, sparrows.

Information about the transfer of the former director of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant flew ahead of Bryukhanov. The entire zone poured out onto the parade ground to stare at the “main culprit of the disaster”.

“I adapted to live in the zone,” says Valentina Mikhailovna. — Victor was a man of unpretentiousness. He grew up in a large family. While studying at the institute, he could stand at the drawing board for 18 hours. When someone was “burning”, he ran to Victor. He made many diplomas and term papers. It never crossed his mind to ask for money. He helped many people in the colony.

In order not to go crazy, Viktor Petrovich began to study English behind bars. Soon I read the classics in the original. From the "thieves" and dangerous position of the chief dispatcher, who distributed the prisoners according to work, he refused. He worked as a mechanic in the boiler room, was engaged in the development of documentation for the reconstruction of the boiler room.

- They lived by the fact that in letters they recalled the happiest years of life. After all, we met Viktor in Angren, where we both worked at the state district power station. I remember seeing the surname Bryukhanov in a magazine - I also thought what a stupid surname. God forbid ... And she herself soon became Bryukhanova. Cars that came from the mountains brought armfuls of wild tulips. Victor made all the windowsills with flowers. They listened to the nightingales in the hazel groves. Then, already in Pripyat, we somehow swam on April 9 and suddenly we see: two elks swim out of the water, walk along the sand, shake themselves off.

The prison could not cross out the past. Even after the trial, the investigator said: “Now you can dissolve the marriage at any time.” Valentina Mikhailovna then barely restrained herself so as not to be rude in response. She was 48 years old, Viktor - 52. When her son Oleg got married, Bryukhanov was allowed to go home for a month. By that time, he was already serving his sentence not in a common zone, but in a colony-settlement in Uman.

- Victor walked silently around the Kyiv apartment, everything around was new to him. Friends and colleagues came in the evening. Where did they come from? Looking at the emaciated Vitya, we went into the kitchen, where my daughter and I cut salads, and began to cry. I hissed, “Come on, wipe away all the tears so he can’t see. He needs support, not pity.”

- Played a wedding. Our daughter married the son of Bryukhanov, says Ivan Tsarenko. We became matchmakers. Then I brought Viktor Petrovich home in my car every weekend. We stopped at the police station, put a mark: arrived, then left. All this was very unpleasant. But everywhere Bryukhanov was treated with respect. He "in chemistry" worked as a dispatcher in construction, was valued as a knowledgeable engineer. Nobody considered him a criminal.

“With things to go!”

Final: “With things to go!” - sounded to Viktor Bryukhanov in September 1991. Released early. The other five defendants in the "Chernobyl case" also served half of the term. Boris Rogozhkin left for Nizhny Novgorod. Nikolai Fomin developed a reactive psychosis in 1988 after two years in detention. He was sent to the Rybinsk neuropsychiatric hospital for prisoners YUN 83/14. Then, at the insistence of his relatives, he was transferred from the prison hospital to a civilian psychiatric clinic in the Tver region. At one time he worked at the Kalinin NPP. Doctors only temporarily alleviate his suffering.

Bryukhanov immediately went to Chernobyl after his release. We met him very warmly at the station and appointed him head of the technical department.

And when Viktor Petrovich turned 60 years old, the Minister of Energy of Ukraine Makukhin invited him to the post of deputy head of the Interenergo association. Bryukhanov dealt with contracts for the supply of electricity abroad, went on business trips to Hungary, Japan, and Germany. He worked until the age of 72, and only when his eyesight fell did he retire.

- October 27, 1997 in Slavutych celebrated 20 years since the launch of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. We were also invited,” says Valentina Mikhailovna. - When Victor was called to the podium, the whole hall rose, they clapped so that my ears were blocked.

- And what do Bryukhanov and I have now? Ivan Tsarenko asks. - Certificate of liquidators of the first category, disability. They give 332 hryvnias for enhanced nutrition. By law, we should be paid eight minimum pensions. But the law doesn't work. They should give free medicines. But they don't. Viktor Petrovich has no resentment left, he says: “Chernobyl is my cross for life.”

Three of the former inmates are no longer alive. Dyatlov passed away at the age of 64 from heart failure. Kovalenko died of cancer. The same incurable disease also crippled Laushkin. He didn't even last a year at liberty. “Yura did not have time to get a residence permit in Kyiv - they did not want to bury him at the local cemetery,” says Yuri Andreev. “Until the organization of veterans of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant intervened, his body lay in the apartment for more than a week.”

In 1991, the newly assembled commission of the Gosatomnadzor of the USSR came to the conclusion that the Chernobyl accident had become catastrophic due to the unsatisfactory design of the reactor. Many of the accusations that were previously made against the station personnel were not confirmed either.

- Do you believe that Viktor Bryukhanov and five workers of the station will be rehabilitated?

- The court was allied. Who will do this now? says Valentina Mikhailovna. There are no more forces, life is lived. Victor had two strokes, the left side is failing. We went through therapy in the fall. My husband was given injections around the eyes, 10 ampoules - 1000 hryvnia. He suffers greatly that he cannot read and solve his favorite crossword puzzles. TV only listens, but sees only contours. You need surgery to repair your retina. But it is made only in four countries of the world. Who needs us now?

Kyiv—Moscow