Midnight in Chernobyl
by Adam Higginbotham
This book is a retelling of the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown, and its effects
on the people and landscape around it. It is presented as a narrative, and is
based on the translation of several Russian books on the topic, interviews with
the survivors, and evidence which has been preserved in the Chernobyl
museum in Kiev.
The book starts with the selection of what was initially a
forested site in a Ukranian backwater, and describes the building of the plant,
the construction of the futuristic atomic town of Pripyat, the disaster,
cleanup activities ,and further health and career trajectories of the people
who were involved in the meltdown of reactor number 4 at the V. I. Lenin
nuclear power station exactly 33 years before this post went up.
Chapter two, which contains a brief introduction to the
science behind the nuclear power station, was not clearly written and contained
a few glaring errors. This put me off for a while. After all, I’ve encountered Chernobyl science in a
few forms over the years. The meltdown resulted in molten uranium oxide (the
fuel) and zirconium oxide (from the zirconium fuel rods, after they combusted)
melting its way through the concrete lower radiation shield of the reactor. As
the melt assimilated concrete (which is sand and Portland cement), it gained
enough silica that when it cooled, zircon crystallized as a major phase. Some
of the SHRIMP labs in Europe were interested
in analysing this “chernobylite” zircon, and asked us detailed questions when
we built them their instrument. Additionally, we had a visit from several
potential customers from the Kurchatov Institute, so it was interesting to
learn about the organization’s role in the Soviet Nuclear Power system.
However, I soon realized that the science was only a bit player in the disaster.
The nuclear power plant exploded because at 1:26 am 33 years
ago, Leonid Tuptunov followed his checklist for shutting down the reactor, and
pressed the emergency stop button. He was unaware that the reactor had entered
an unstable configuration, or that the fuel rods engaged by the emergency stop
would briefly increase reactivity before suppressing it- a brief increase that was
long enough to a runaway nuclear reaction.
In other words, this was not a technological failure so much
as a managerial and information handling one. And as such, it is very relevant
to today’s scientific, technological, and governmental culture.
In recent years, I have seen a trend towards a
butt-covering, information-poor, checklist-heavy, auditable approach to safety
in various workplaces here in Australia-
this is a departure from the deep knowledge, situational awareness,
information-rich approach that I learned earlier in my career. So it was
illuminating to see that this 150 billion dollar disaster was caused by a
combination of information siloing, image management, and undereducating, along
with the inevitable corner-cutting that unrealistic expectations produce. This
book is just as relevant to those who want to prevent the next technological
disaster as it is for history buffs interested in the previous one. I highly
recommend it to anyone with these interests.
