To these weighty suspicions some observers, who are undisputed nuclear experts, but naive babes in Soviet politics, reply that Chernobyl is run by the Soviet Ministry of Energy, not the Ministry of Defense; therefore it must have been a reactor producing electric power only.
Now it so happens that even in the US it is the Dept. of Energy, not Defense, that runs US production reactors; but that is quite unimportant in comparison with the fact that in the USSR everything, from thumbtacks to plutonium production, is run by the government; its various ministries will cooperate whenever necessary, always giving priority to military matters. What ministry does what is not just a matter of convenience, but also a matter for propagandistic deception. Nuclear weapons production generally comes under the ministry "of medium-sized machinery," its budget, for propaganda purposes, figuring in the column of peaceful industry. If Chernobyl produced both electricity and plutonium, it would of course be allotted to the Min. of Energy, since outward appearances never fail to stress the USSR's passionate yearning for peace.
This applies to the official Soviet defense budget in general. Army uniforms are budgeted under the Min. of Textiles; the metal for weapons under the Min. of Heavy Industry; and so forth. The official defense budget contains items such as military pay (a minuscule fraction of the total
¾as compared to some 50% in the US). It takes a LaRoque, a Lown and a Caldicott, all rolled into a triple babe, to take official Soviet defense figures (whether in roubles or as a fraction of GNP) seriously.But back to Chernobyl: I have had the opportunity to interview a Soviet electrical engineer who was on the team that designed the regulator equipment used at Chernobyl, who often tested it at various power plants, and who is intimately familiar with technical procedures in them. He finds the document presented by the Soviets in Vienna, widely hailed as "surprisingly open," utterly unbelievable in the area of his expertise, namely the description of the testing which preceded, and allegedly caused, the disaster. He regards it as a clumsy attempt to put the blame on the crew: he finds no less than 21 items in the original Russian text (I have only a summary as published in Nuclear News, Oct 86) which are either extremely improbable or outright false.
For example:
1) The engineers are accused of deviating from the test program in overriding safety features and in other cases. But a Soviet test program is a very rigid document that must be followed to the letter. For simple run-of-the-mill experiments, it is worked out by the Chief Engineer of the plant; for more complicated tests (as this series certainly was), it would have to be approved by a central ministry in Moscow, with a locally implemented program providing exact responsibilities for individually named engineers. It is unthinkable that anyone, let alone a whole team, would have risked their jobs (and more) by disobeying such a strict plan.
2) The purpose of the tests was to check the capability of the generators, in the event of their disconnection from the steam supply and loss of offsite power, to provide continued power. By inertia (during "run-down," for as long as 45 secs) it will still provide power to the feedwater pumps in the vital brief interval before the emergency diesel generators start up automatically and attain full speed. But the type of regulator mentioned in the report has been in service for 20 years. Why test it now? Why would such a vital test not have been performed on Unit 1 some eight years ago?
In the opinion of my source, the entire "unusually open and self-critical" story presented by the Soviets in Vienna more likely matches that of a good computer simulation than that of the real event.
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Vol. 14, No. 3
Newsletter: Access to Energy Newsletter Archive Volume: Issues Issue/No.: Vol. 14, No. 3 Date: November 29, 2004 05:01 PM Title: The roots of their power
Copyright © 2004 - Access to Energy Newsletter Archive
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