In the Twinkling of an Eye (eBook)

Chapter 2

Chernobyl Power Plant, Reactor 4, About thirty minutes earlier

“Holy fuck! Fuck, fuck, fuck!” screamed the young technician as he looked bug-eyed at the dials in front of him and shrill alarms began to sound. He and his comrades on the night shift had inherited a shit storm.

Things had rapidly gone from bad to worse to doomed. What led to this massive clusterfuck had ironically been an attempt to test the safety features of the RBMK light water graphite-moderated nuclear reactor.

The evening shift had just left around midnight as the night shift took over to run the long-delayed power-failure stress test. And the stress was not just mechanically induced but also human. The pressure was on from the plant managers for the operators to successfully complete the safety test – a safety test that had failed miserably on three earlier occasions over the past four years.

Perhaps they should have expected that this test would be far from routine, thought the technician.

He reserved special loathing for their inept senior plant manager Pavel Orlov, who was constantly kissing asses and toadying to the authorities in Kiev and Moscow. Word was that Orlov wanted this safety test to succeed in quick order so he could score points with senior Soviet nuclear officials and move his own career up the ladder. This, in spite of the fact that Orlov knew nothing about the technical challenges involved.

Worthless apparatchik.

The test had been designed to recreate the circumstances of an emergency shutdown. For this reason, Comrade Orlov had mandated that all experienced hands be present for the simulation.

Somehow, though, the test scenario had become reality as the simulated emergency developed into not only a real emergency but a complete nightmare.

The test had been challenging from the start. All of the operators knew that a safety design flaw in these nuclear reactors meant that they’d have a one-minute gap between the time the power was interrupted and the three backup diesel generators managed to bridge the gap with the 5.5 megawatts of electrical power required to run the main pump for the coolant water that kept the reactor safe from a meltdown.

Orlov and his senior staff hoped – “hope” being the operative word – that rotational energy from the plant’s steam turbine could be used to bridge that 60-second gap.

Hence, the test and the sealing of their fate.

Amazingly, in spite of the three previous failures of this important safety test, “no safety issues” were expected according to Comrade “I’m in charge!” Orlov, and neither the reactor designer nor the scientific manager was consulted. Orlov and his craven deputy plant managers pressed forward. Power levels were far too low as the test began, so Orlov ordered that control rods be withdrawn in order to increase power while automatic safety systems were shut down and alarms ignored.

The technician shook his head in disbelief. This was hardly standard protocol, but “the test must proceed” was the order of the day. Orlov and his lickspittles were firmly in charge and, to add to the tension, were standing directly behind him.

The technician looked at the others, then said, “Pardon me, sir, but the safety systems should not be overridden. We’re on really dangerous ground here. These systems shouldn’t be pushed past their…”

“No one should worry,” barked Orlov. “Just do your jobs. We’re going to finish this test per Moscow’s orders. So, sit back and do your jobs. Follow my lead.”

Uh huh, follow his lead. Where? The technician and his team were increasingly nervous.

Things had begun to go wrong almost immediately.

Initially, steam bubbles in the core inhibited the ability of the liquid water to absorb neutrons, thus increasing power output further. The automatic control system kicked in and compensated for this by inserting control rods into the reactor, but things were happening far too quickly for the human operators.

The technician, watching the gauges go crazy and lights blinking everywhere, started to say something more, but Orlov’s withering glare killed the words in his throat. What should I do? he thought, pulse racing. If he said anything more it could be his job, but things were headed south in a hurry.

To his everlasting shame, he bit his tongue.

It’s debatable whether operator error or technical design errors ultimately produced the impending catastrophe or merely worsened it, but in combination they were a remarkable formula for disaster.

The technician saw the large power spike and the rapidly rising temperature. So did Comrade Orlov, who stood over his shoulder like a vulture looming over roadkill.

The technician’s lips trembled. “Sir…sir...?”

Orlov blinked at the dials, not quite comprehending what was happening.

It finally sank in that Orlov was witnessing doom itself, and his eyes nearly popped out. After another moment’s hesitation, Orlov’s fat, sweaty fist hit the EPS-5 button in front of the technician, which triggered an emergency shutdown or SCRAM of the reactor.

In a trembling voice but still trying to reassert his authority, Orlov said, “Th…this should take care of the problem.”

Instead, this may have sealed their doom. As always, irony was a central feature of Soviet life.

After the button was pressed, the control rods began their descent into the reactor core to decrease power output, but they moved slowly. Worse, there was also a design flaw in the control rods because the lower portion of the rod did not consist of neutron-absorbing material but instead displaced coolant water, increasing power further in the reactor instead of the opposite.

This was akin to spraying gasoline from a fire extinguisher onto a raging fire.

Sitting in front of the control panel, the sweating technician had to exert extreme sphincter control as he watched the dials spinning out of control. That idiot Orlov had first overridden the safety controls to increase power and then SCRAM’ed the reactor to put it in shutdown mode and…and for what?

Nothing, nothing, nothing.

He began to think of the bootleg copy of the American movie “The China Syndrome,” which he’d seen only a few years earlier. Another case of a SCRAM’ed reactor and severe coolant problems.

The power output dial indicated they had now jumped past 30,000 megawatts, ten times the reactor’s normal level, and still climbing rapidly towards 33,000. He knew instinctively that this was not going to end well, and yet he was helpless to stop it.

What happened next was referred to as a “power excursion,” as if the power, having tired of its humdrum purpose of turning water into steam and propelling turbines to generate electricity, had decided to take an outing to see the sights, maybe a luxury cruise or take in a show or two.

As if…

Instead, all hell broke loose.

A loud explosion shook the building, followed a few seconds later by an even louder one. Years later, scientists would debate the exact sequence of events and what transpired. Some would theorize that the initial explosion was in fact a nuclear explosion that was followed by a steam explosion.

What was not in dispute was that human folly was abundant.

Regardless of the exact sequence, the core overheated and then exploded, fracturing some of the fuel rods, which in turn limited the insertion of the control rods to only one-third of their length, far from sufficient to stop the reaction.

As bad as that was, things can always get worse, and they did in short order.

The reactor now underwent runaway criticality, which caused a graphite fire and the remaining coolant water to flash into explosive steam. This sudden outpouring of energy, equivalent to ten tons of TNT, utterly destroyed the reactor casing and revealed yet another fatal design flaw: there was no hardened containment vessel to encase the reactor and its deadly radiation should there be a major problem.

And there definitely was a major problem.

The blast blew the 2000-ton upper plate of the reactor through the roof of the building as if the gates of hell had burst open.

Then, the real horror began.

With no hardened containment vessel around the reactor, the enormous blast ejected vast amounts of highly radioactive material, smoke and steam sky-high, starting fires on the roof of reactor number 3 next door. A roof that had been constructed of flammable material – another design flaw, as if they needed more.

The technician looked about and saw that Orlov and his coterie had already departed posthaste. He left the control room at a sprint, passing the bodies of two of his team killed in the explosion by collapsing walls. He saw only their feet protruding from the rubble and for an absurd moment thought of the Wicked Witch of the East being crushed under Dorothy’s falling house in The Wizard of Oz. He imagined seeing their feet curling up and out of sight from the intense heat and radiation. He felt sick and wanted to vomit.

He ran for the reactor building, or what was left of it, to see if the rest of the night crew had gotten out. The technician saw only devastation and fires everywhere. He suddenly stopped and stared, dumbfounded. Beaming skyward out of the destroyed top of the reactor...